


Fire in the Blood

by DirtbagsInc



Series: do not spray into eyes [1]
Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Drug Use, Evelyn also talks too much once she gets angry, F/M, Home Invasion, Hostage Situations, Psychological Drama, Sensuality, Trevor talks too much, also The Lost figure in there somewhere, this naturally leads to problems, which is kind of unfortunate for them really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 20:06:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2123040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirtbagsInc/pseuds/DirtbagsInc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evelyn is a bank teller who was taken hostage in a recent robbery-- but that's all done with now, she got out alive, and life goes on. Or so she thought, until a terrifying criminal with a rough voice and too-bright eyes showed up on her doorstep towing a bloodied colleague and informing her that her house is their new safehouse. Soon, her own home becomes her battleground as she tries to keep far enough ahead of Trevor Philips to prevent her entire life from crumbling into ashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bank Heist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Trevor (probably for the best), I definitely don't own the lovely sandbox that is the Grand Theft Auto universe, I'm not profiting a cent from this mess, and even the title is from [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAs_Y09L9bs). That said, my ideas and expressions are my own and I'd appreciate if you wouldn't take or repost without asking first. Thanks!

Trevor Philips returned to himself and opened his eyes.

He was crouched beside a vehicle, machine gun in hand, and there was a throbbing ache at the side of his face—no, his ear, and as he placed the pain, he got his last memory back, as well as the significant memories leading up to it.

Bank heist in Chumash with Frank and Mikey—the third of its kind since they swore off working together ever again, but funny how things work out. Funny how boredom sets in and you find yourself working second-rate jobs just to stave it off.

Franklin and Michael had been working on the vault, leaving Trevor on crowd control—he excelled there; people tended to be way too frightened of him from the first second they laid eyes on him (ski mask or no ski mask, though all three had gone with the former option for this particular job) to put up much of a fight, and he had a way of discouraging heroes. All was going fine until the police showed up much earlier than expected—three cars, which Trevor thought was probably overkill for a junky little bank like this one. Then again, it was _Chumash_ — nothing ever fucking happened here; the police were probably bored shitless.

Since he was closest the front, Trevor sidled to the door to yell out some vague threat about them having hostages, and apparently his cover wasn't as secure as he thought, because before he could even really get the words out, someone's bullet tore a hole in his mask, inconveniently taking part of his ear with it.

That's when everything went red.

He remembered bits and pieces—got a vague flash of himself screaming something along the lines of them "not respecting proper copper-bank robber procedure," but most of it was gone. He touched his ear and winced. Not too much of it was missing from the feel of it, but it was oozing blood, and it stung like a _bitch_.

His radio was squalling from where it was hanging at his waist. "T? T! What the hell is going on out there?"

Well, if the guys were still bothering to radio him, he couldn't have been out for too long, so that was good news, at least.

He lifted the radio, keyed it on. "Uhhh. That's a good question." Given that he couldn't hear any gunshots or shouts, he judged that it was at least eighty percent safe to hoist his head up above the head of the car he was crouching behind, so he took a look.

After getting an eyeful, he keyed his radio again. "Yeah, so the cops showed up. I—I handled it," he said, putting on a casually unaffected tone, though _handled it_ was something of an understatement.

There was a second of silence, then Franklin came online: "T, man, M's bangin' his head against the safe deposit boxes. I take that to mean you _handlin'_ things ain't necessarily a good thing?"

Trevor swung around, turning his back to the tableau of police officers lying in their own blood in the sandy soil as he flung out his gun hand demonstratively. "Hey, give me some credit, for fuck's sake, all right? We got a stay of execution for what, another two minutes till the rest of the men in blue show up, so might I _suggest_ you guys hurry the _fuck_ up in there?"

He dropped the radio to swing from his waist without waiting for an answer, instead striding inside to check on the hostages. Hopefully none of them had done anything fucking moronic in his brief absence. Personally, he figured you'd have to be one stupid shithead to piss off the man who'd just got done making soup out of six police officers, but there were _lots_ of stupid shitheads out there, as he could personally attest.

Fortunately, this group seemed to have a collective brain between them. He scanned the people cowering on the floor for anyone doing something stupid like making a phone call, then, to re-establish his role as boss of the situation, gnashed out, "So who likes bacon?" and fired a spray of bullets into the ceiling, pulling a gratifying amount of muffled shrieking from the hostages.

"Hey, man, cut that shit out," said Franklin as he and Michael appeared from the back of the bank, carrying the loot in heavy-duty knapsacks.

Michael paused for just a second, taking in the sight of the bloody hole in Trevor's ski mask, then he shook his head. " _Handled_ it, huh?" he repeated skeptically.

Trevor showed his hands. "Oh, well, excuse the fuck outta me, sorry for not being _bulletproof!_ "

"Come on," Michael growled, heading for the doors. "We got about a ninety second window before the _real_ cavalry gets here."

Franklin followed him out, and Trevor took a few steps after them before a thought struck him. He turned abruptly on his booted heel and walked to the exact center of the lobby, then pointed his gun towards one of the ten or so hostages lying flat on the ground. "Eenie."

He swung his gun around clockwise to the next hostage in line. "Meenie." Again. "Miney."

The last movement found him looking down his sights at a skirt that wasn't unduly _short,_ but had certainly ridden up a few inches above where it was _supposed_ to fall at the knee, treating him to the sight of a pair of particularly shapely legs. " _Moe,_ " he growled through an unexpected burst of delight, then he was striding over, reaching down and taking hold of the legs' owner by the elbow. "Upsy-daisy, sweetheart," he grunted, hauling her to her high-heeled feet—she stumbled; he tightened his grip on her arm to ensure that she didn't fall over and slow him down. She caught her balance and raised frightened eyes to his.

He was wearing a ski mask, so aside from noting his eye color and that he was, in fact, in possession of a nose and a mouth, she wasn't going to get much information that way.

On the other hand, there was nothing to shield _her_ from _his_ view, and he was pleased to note that the legs weren't writing checks the face couldn't cash. She was a white woman, just an inch or so shorter than he was in her high heels, and he initially clocked her as being in about her early twenties, though maybe he was under-guessing: he was so used to being around prematurely-aged meth heads that her clear, unlined skin probably looked younger to him than she actually was (and a second later he caught a glint of silver in her long brown hair, lending further credence to the older-than-she-looked thing).

It was the eyes that really got him, though: a little bit of green, a little bit of brown— _and a whole lotta scared,_ he thought as they rested unblinkingly on his masked face. Looking into those big ol' innocent eyes, he doubted she'd ever laid a finger on anyone with the intent to harm in her life—which made her perfect for what he had in mind.

The examination of his selection took all of a second. Satisfied, he bent down to pick up the purse lying closest to her hiding spot, slung it over his shoulder, tightened his hold, and started moving toward the exit, hauling her with him and addressing her as she stumbled over her heels again: "The nicer you play this, dollface, the greater the chances of you walking away without a bullet in your head, so don't do anything stupid, okay?"

She said nothing. Come to think of it, she hadn't made a peep the entire time, which was a little unusual for a civilian woman on the wrong side of a gun. Trevor was starting to wonder if he'd taken a fucking mute as his hostage when they burst out of the bank and the noon sunlight blinded him, derailing his train of thought to a more immediate line of inventive cursing.

Franklin was already behind the wheel of the getaway car, and Michael was standing by the shotgun door, waiting. When he saw Trevor, he groaned. "T, what the fuck?"

" _T, what the fuck?_ " Trevor mimicked in an unflatteringly high-pitched imitation of Michael's voice. "You want to have no backup plan when the cops run us down? Shut up and let me deal with it!"

Michael was muttering something, doubtless casting aspersions on Trevor's ability to _deal with it,_ but Trevor tuned him out, opening the back door, shoving his hostage in, and immediately climbing in after her, forcing her to move one seat over or end up with a lapful of bloody bank robber (not that he'd have minded if she'd stayed put). The second Trevor's feet left the ground, Frank was taking off.

Trevor got settled, then glanced over to see that his hostage was automatically buckling her seat belt into place. "Oh, yeah, safety first, probably a good idea," he said mockingly. She had time to shoot him a frightened, uncertain glance before his attention was called away by Michael, who was surveying them in the makeup mirror.

"So, T, since you're _dealing with it,_ answer me this: what's more suspicious than three men in ski masks driving away from a crime scene in broad daylight?"

_Shit._

Michael answered his own question: "Three men in ski masks driving away from a crime scene in broad daylight… with a _terrified woman in the backseat._ What're we supposed to do, take off the masks and give her a good eyeful to recount in exhaustive detail to the forensic artist later? Or do you suggest we drive past the incoming cop cars like _this_?"

Trevor had forgotten that little detail, but he wasn't going to let on to Michael that he was anything less than in complete control of this situation. He stalled as he glanced surreptitiously around the car for something that could serve as a blindfold. " _Jeeeee_ zus, enough with the micromanaging! It's like you think I've never taken a hostage before!"

Michael froze, pressed his eyes closed, and then, speaking like a man at the end of his rope and too tired to care, said, "Believe me, T. I know through _excruciating_ experience that you've taken a hostage before."

Trevor was just about to snarl an order for him to leave Patricia out of it when inspiration struck, and he turned abruptly to the girl. "Close your eyes," he barked.

"Oh, _sure,_ that's gonna work," Michael pronounced sarcastically.

" _You_ shut the fuck up!" Trevor commanded as the girl complied, and just for incentive, he put the still-warm barrel of his gun against her head—she flinched back, but neither opened her eyes nor made a sound. "You're gonna want to keep them closed for a second," he said encouragingly, "and no peeking! Or… you know." He poked her with the barrel again, and she released a shaky exhale through her nose, but her eyes remained steadfastly closed.

Assured that she wouldn't dare open those peepers until given the all-clear, Trevor pulled his mask off, turned it backwards, then stretched it over her head—she jumped, reaching up to touch his hand as he tugged it down over her eyes as if she wanted to stop him, but she thought better of it and let her hand fall. Trevor made sure the mask was covering her eyes and nose but that her mouth was free, then he leaned back and nodded smugly at his partners. "All clear, gentlemen."

There was a bit of scornful huffing on Michael's part, but neither man complained out loud about the jury-rigged blindfold as they pulled their own masks off. As soon as his face was clear, Franklin glanced over his shoulder at Trevor, then at Michael, then said, "Man, not to step outta line, but I think you two would benefit from couples' counseling."

"Aw, _what_?" Michael scoffed, as Trevor simultaneously barked " _Hey!_ You're giving the lady the wrong idea!"

"Hey, I'm just saying—when y'all were like 'hey, let's work together some more,' I was like, 'Hell yeah'—thought you'd've sorted out your issues or whatever, right?" Franklin scoffed. "Man, was _I_ wrong."

"I don't think that's exactly _fair_ ," Trevor objected. "We don't fight _all_ the time."

"Yeah," snorted Michael. "Just on days that end with 'y.'"

"And anyway, in my _defense,_ just because _M_ here is a good business partner doesn't mean he's not a backstabbing _prick_ ," Trevor said pointedly.

"Oh, yeah," Michael said with a hard little chuckle, "and just because _T_ has a gift for escaping death traps doesn't mean he isn't a hypersensitive, spoiled brat _child_ of a sociopath—"

"Oh, am I? _Am I, M_?" demanded Trevor, leaning forward into the front seat and raising his voice.

Michael, in turn, pitched his voice to carry over his friend's: "—who holds one _hell_ of a grudge and has severely overestimated his own worth—"

"Oh, that's _rich—you_ wanna talk about overinflated self-worth!" howled Trevor. He was about two seconds away from beating Michael across the head with the butt of his assault rifle, but fortunately, Franklin intervened. Still, it took him a moment to get the two full-grown men to stop squabbling with each other.

"Hey, shut up, y'all, _shut up,_ _ **shut up**_!"

They finally grew silent, though Trevor drove the heel of his hand hard into the back of Michael's seat and Michael retaliated by jerkily throwing his discarded mask back at Trevor's face. Franklin looked between them in disbelief, eventually deciding that to call them out on their respective childish actions would mire him too deeply in their drama. He just gripped the wheel, sighed, and said, "Look, all I'm saying is that y'all better figure _something_ out, because I am sick and tired of playing mediator for two old white dudes who can't find a way to get along on their _own._ "

Michael threw up his hands but otherwise said nothing, apparently deciding to take the high road… or whatever sissy euphemism he liked to use for backing out of a fight just when it was getting good. Since apparently no one was going to provide him with more fuel, Trevor leaned back into his seat, getting comfortable.

A little too comfortable. This was wrong. He frowned and sat up again. "Hey—where the fuck are the police?"

"Man, I don't even know," Franklin said, glancing at him in the rearview. There was a brief, awkward pause as all three men looked around for evidence of flashing red-and-blue lights, then Franklin said, "You think you killed 'em all?"

"Nah," Trevor said skeptically. "Chumash is small, but it ain't _that_ small. Besides. Listen." They all took another second to take in the sound of sirens, but the noise was distant, nowhere close to the little backroad route they were on.

After another beat of silence, Michael ventured, "You don't think we just… took the exact right roads this time, do you?"

"Since when has that _ever_ happened to us in the history of, well… ever?"

Trevor leaned back again with a smirk. "Hey," he said optimistically, "gotta be a first time for everything, right?"

Michael shifted in his seat. "Just… keep driving. We'll get to the bottom of it eventually."

"Sure. Bottom of the _Pacific Ocean,_ way this is going," muttered Trevor. When neither of his partners deigned to respond to him, he decided he'd better find another way to entertain himself.

His eyes fell on the hostage beside him, then traveled downward to the purse he'd lugged out to the car along with her—he always one for remembering odd details, and he was glad for it now. He could burn at least a few minutes figuring out Doe-Eyes' story. "Let's see what we got here," he rumbled, picking up the bag and rummaging around. He found the wallet pretty quickly; it was a big thing, practically a clutch, and he stretched his long legs across the floor space towards her as he clicked it open—he figured he might as well lounge, since she was all but pressed against the door. If he didn't know for a fact that was the standard reaction of a blinded hostage against the threat of those she couldn't see, it might have hurt his feelings.

The purse belonged to her, all right, as her license confirmed—she was wearing glasses in the picture, slim, black-rimmed things, but it was unmistakably her. He scanned her information (he was right, she was twenty-seven—older than he initially took her for) then glanced up at her. "Evelyn Noble?" he tested.

Her masked face turned towards him—just a little, but the response was obvious to anyone paying attention, which he definitely was. He chuckled and flipped the license around between his fingertips. "What happened to the glasses, Evy? They gave you a kind of sexy librarian vibe."

Michael groaned from the front seat. "Aw, come on, T, would you give it a rest?"

"What?" Trevor demanded, offended.

"Believe it or not, there _are_ situations where it just ain't appropriate to be hitting on a lady," Franklin chimed in.

"You know what? That attitude is _exactly_ why you're single," Trevor pronounced, jabbing a finger at the rearview mirror. " _No_ imagination. Let me give you a little advice— _every_ occasion is an opportunity to meet new people."

"Oh, well, excuse me, dog, but I don't see _you_ celebrating your silver wedding anniversary, you know what I'm saying?"

"That's different," Trevor said, settling back into his seat. "That's by choice."

"Yeah, man. Sure. I still don't think you're gonna get lucky with a girl you just pulled out of a bank at gunpoint."

"I don't know. Why don't we ask Evy? Evy?" Trevor said, turning to the girl. "What do you think?"

She remained still, and he remembered he still wasn't actually certain that she _could_ answer him. "Wait, wait, wait, first things first—you're not a mute, are you?"

There was a brief pause, then, finally, she spoke: "No, I'm not a mute." Her voice was a little lower and a little huskier than her appearance would suggest, features that twinned surprisingly well with her faint southern drawl. It was exactly the kind of voice you wanted to hear first thing in the morning after a marathon in the sack the night before, and Trevor found himself warming at the thought, but he pulled it back. Despite what Michael and Franklin apparently thought of him, he did have _some_ sense of appropriate timing.

(It just didn't usually mesh with everyone _else's_ sense of appropriate timing.)

"And you speak English, right?" he asked instead.

"I'm an American."

Trevor snorted. "Believe me, princess, that don't exactly answer the question."

"Yes, I speak English."

"So what the fuck kinda accent is that?"

Michael and Franklin exchanged quick glances, all but holding their breath. Luckily, their hostage proved smart enough to refrain from getting defensive and turning the question back around on the guy in charge—instead, she answered the question clearly and simply: "Louisiana." She paused, looked like she was going to say something else, and Michael and Franklin both drew breath to stop her, but she simply added, "My accent's not even strong."

"Sure _, suuure_ ," Trevor drawled. So—" he shifted sideways, closer to her, putting his arm across the back of the seat behind her and pretending not to notice as she flinched away. " _Evy_. Would you ever date a bank robber?"

"That ain't exactly the question—" Franklin began to protest.

"Shh!" hissed Trevor violently. "We're starting with the _basics._ Evy, please. Your thoughts."

She was still and quiet for a moment, then she said, "You have to know there's no way I can actually answer that question."

Trevor was taken-aback. "Oh? Why not?"

"Well…" Her voice shook a little, but she pushed on. "Operating on the assumption that this isn't just some twisted lead-in to an inevitable torture-rape-murder scenario—"

"It's _not_ ," Michael and Franklin said, emphatically and in unison.

"What kind of monsters do you take us for?" demanded Trevor in loud, indignant tones.

Evelyn ignored the projected outrage, though her voice sounded a little stronger when she spoke next. "Well, then, you have to know that I'm going to try to curry favor to ensure my own survival and wellbeing. So, yes, sure, I'd date a bank robber—but if you have a brain in your head you know that there's no way to tell if I'm telling you the truth or the answer I think you want to hear."

There was a brief, thoughtful pause following her conclusion, and then Trevor slid back to his own seat, sighing, "Ah, well, at least you're being _honest_ about your dishonesty. Better than certain _other_ people I could name in this car."

Michael's only response was an extended middle finger, Franklin sighed, and Trevor took to going through the rest of Evelyn's purse. It was an idle philosophy he held that you could tell a lot about a woman from the contents of her purse, and it wasn't like he had anything better to do, short of making jabs at Michael. Franklin was reaching the end of his patience there, so the purse it was.

"So, Evy," he said as he sorted through the contents, "what were the unfortunate circumstances that conspired to bring you to that particular bank this afternoon?"

There was a touch of wryness in her tone when she answered. "Well, I sort of _work_ there, so…"

Trevor raised his eyebrows. "No shit. You weren't behind the counter."

"I was supposed to clock in at noon. I got there like two seconds before you guys came in." If her tone was a little bitter, none of the three men could really blame her for it.

"No kiddin'. Of all the shitty luck," Trevor said.

"Yeah, tell me about it," she mumbled.

At that moment, Trevor happened upon something interesting in her purse. Not a vibrator, unfortunately—wouldn't _that_ be fun to discuss—but interesting all the same. "What is this," he muttered, ostensibly to himself but pitched so she could hear, "a fuckin' library?"

She got visibly tense at the question, and Trevor noticed. "Ooh, what, did I strike a nerve? Embarrassed about carrying _The Story of Psychology_ around in your purse? You probably should be; it's fuckin' weird."

In lieu of answering, she said, "Why are you going through my stuff?"

"Well, think of how irresponsible it would be of me to assume you _aren't_ carrying some kind of weapon!" he said, seamlessly shifting into his high horse persona. "I mean, my colleagues here could be _endangered_! I'm responsible for you, gotta make sure you don't have a tazer stashed away."

"I'm blindfolded," she said bluntly. "I don't even know where my purse _is,_ except for that apparently, _you're_ holding it and going through it." She didn't say _now, get your grubby hands_ _ **out**_ , but it was definitely implied.

"All right, now, take it easy," Trevor said with a half-assed attempt at a soothing tone. She didn't say anything, but she was seething, and he knew it, which made him take particular delight in noisily sifting through the rest of her purse.

Unfortunately, the book was the only thing of real interest (read: the only thing he thought he could use to get a rise out of her). She had a cell phone, a couple of standard, day-to-day tubes of makeup, a pair of sunglasses, and a little golden plastic spray bottle, which he promptly spritzed on his throat: some kind of citrus scent; it was nice. And that was it. With a grunt, he shoved everything back in and then dropped the purse in her lap. "Not much in there. Aren't you ladies supposed to carry your lives around in your purses?"

"I don't know, maybe. Hold on, let me check with the hivemind," she deadpanned. Franklin and Michael chuckled, but Trevor was not amused.

He stared at her in disbelief for a moment, then asked, "Oh, you think that's funny? Guy tries to make conversation, y'know, reduce the _tension_ a little bit, and you make _fun_ of him?"

Wisely, Evelyn stayed silent, and Franklin, ever the peacemaker, attempted to defuse things: "Hey, man, listen—if you get got, don't be a sore loser about it. Personally I thought it was pretty funny."

"Oh, that's _funny_ to you?" Trevor demanded cuttingly. "You think me being accused of being _sexist_ is _funny_?"

"T," said Michael warningly, "calm down."

"DON'T. FUCKING TELL ME TO _CALM_ _DOWN_ ," Trevor roared, his gravelly voice suddenly deafening inside of the small confines of the car.

Franklin and Michael lapsed into a second of startled silence, and that's when the hostage moved, angling her knees in the direction of Trevor's voice and speaking up, her voice low but clear. "Hey, listen, I'm sorry, okay? I really am. I don't think you're sexist; I don't even _know_ you. It was a dumb throwaway joke and I shouldn't have made it."

A tense silence immediately followed the brief apology, everyone waiting to see how Trevor would respond to this. For his part, he watched her suspiciously, sorting through the apology to find any evidence of insincerity or mocking. When he was unable, he relaxed, just minutely, and leaned back into his seat. "See there?" he asked casually. "A little bit of common fucking courtesy, that's all that I ask."

The wave of relief that rippled through the car was palpable. No one wanted to be trapped in a vehicle in the middle of a Trevor tantrum—not even Evelyn, who had the pleasure of being unaware of what, exactly, he was capable of doing in the grips of a rage.

Contented by the apology, he took to staring out of the window, and everyone else, sensing now that the peace was fragile and not helped along by potentially explosive chatter, stayed quiet.

The silence stretched out for maybe fifteen more minutes before Michael sighed and looked over at Franklin. Franklin glanced back at him and shrugged, and Michael turned around and looked back at Trevor.

"All right, gentlemen, just to recap," he said tiredly, "it's been about forty-five minutes since we saw a police car, and that was all the way back at the bank, so I think we pulled off the impossible and actually managed to _evade_ the cops this time around."

"Really interesting, M," Trevor said, still looking out the window. "Is there a point to this?"

"Yes, and my point is that a hostage is a little superfluous at this point, don't you think?"

Trevor finally looked at him, but it was mostly so that Michael could see the mockingly-shocked look on his face as he pressed a hand to his chest. "Oh, that's _cold,_ man. All right, but I'm not gonna be the one to shoot her."

" _What_?" Evelyn demanded, and Michael swung quickly into damage control mode.

" _No one's_ gonna shoot you," he said loudly, then glared at Trevor. "T, think you can go for _two seconds_ without scaring this poor girl? I mean, I understand that's like asking you to go without _breathing,_ but—"

"I was _just kidding,_ " Trevor said scornfully, then looked at Evelyn. "What do you think, Evy? Want to hang out with a couple of bank robbers for a little longer, or you ready for the ride to end?"

"Um. It'd be okay if you just dropped me off now," she said carefully, and Trevor snorted.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call the art of understatement," he pronounced, glancing around and spotting a shoulder on the relatively isolated road they were driving down that looked about right. "Hey, pull over up here."

Franklin obliged, and as the car came to a stop, Trevor scooted over to Evelyn, taking her by the shoulders. "I'm putting you out of the car and taking my mask back. You keep your fucking back turned, eyes closed, and the phone in the purse until you can't hear the car anymore or else you're getting a bullet in your brains, and I'm a crack fuckin' shot from a moving vehicle, you understand me?"

"Perfectly," she said, her voice only shaking a little bit as she gathered up her purse and held it tightly in both hands, as if he might try to take it from her. He had no intention of doing so; he'd already pocketed the little bit of cash in her wallet and nothing else particularly interested him.

As he leaned over her to open the door, she hesitated, then asked, "Are you wearing my perfume?"

"What, you think only girls like to smell pretty?" he asked, giving her shoulders a push. "Come on, you're wearing out your welcome, let's go."

She climbed out of the car, and he followed—he didn't necessarily _need_ to escort her, but he enjoyed holding her by the arms, staying just a hair behind her as he walked her a few steps off the road. She was shaking, probably terrified that he was just taking her away to murder her in cold blood, but her steps were steady, at least. Once they were safely clear of any traffic that might happen along, he rubbed the sides of her arms encouragingly and asked, "Eyes closed?"

"Glued shut."

"Ooh, trust me, you don't want to do that. Makes a hell of a mess," he said, and drew the mask off of her head. It had the effect of rumpling her hair, so helpfully, he reached over to smooth it down, saying as he did, "Well, Evy, you've been a pretty decent hostage, all things considered. No screaming, no begging, no biting or fucking _scratching,_ though between you and me, biting and scratching ain't so bad under the right circumstances."

She said nothing, but he didn't blame her. He reached forward, gathering the hair that had spilled over in front of her shoulders and pulled it back, running his fingers through it and enjoying the silkiness of the strands on his rough fingertips before letting go and patting her on the shoulders. "Next time, then. Remember—don't _move_ till the car's gone."

"Roger that," she muttered, and he backed away to the car, keeping his eyes on her as he slid back inside.

"Go on, Frank," he said, and as Franklin put the car in gear and drove off, Trevor turned to keep his eyes on the girl. She didn't so much as move for as long as he could see her, then the car took a bend and she was lost from view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as stated above, this is the first in a planned series, which, at the moment, I have ideas for at least four stories for-- all varying lengths, since it's easier for me personally to write multiple cohesive storylines with their own bit of breathing room than trying to cram them all into one bigass insurmountable story (not that I don't love reading bigass stories, cause trust me, I do). Basically, I'm in this for the long haul, as far as I can see. I'm new to the GTA V fandom and new to Trevor's characterization, but honestly, I'm crazy about this 'verse and I hope my scribblings make some of you happy.
> 
> Next time, we get a bit of Evelyn's perspective, and Trevor (of course) returns. Feedback is both greatly motivating and greatly appreciated!


	2. Evelyn

All told, Evelyn Noble got over being taken hostage in a bank robbery pretty quickly.

Sure, it was beyond terrifying being singled out and hauled out of her place of employment to act as a human shield for three faceless bank robbers if needed. Worse still was the fact that the one who singled her out in the _first_ place, a tall, swaggering man with a loud, harsh voice, kept giving her attention that she thought went a little above and beyond standard captor-hostage interaction, though she wasn't exactly in a position to know that for sure. All she knew was that one second he would be talking to and behaving around her in a detached, professional (albeit terrifying) manner, then in the next second would switch with mercurial quickness to treating her like she was a girl he was trying to "befriend" at a bar (and on an entirely different level was the surreal tantrum he'd thrown in response to a throwaway comment she'd made, as if she was a friend who should have known which lines not to cross). It was weird, frightening…

…and over now. That was the thought she pulled herself back to whenever things got too dark inside her head, whenever she started dwelling on that last minute of her captivity, when "T" was escorting her off the road with his hot-palmed hands on her arms and walking just a hair too close behind her, a minute she spent certain that the whole unfortunate incident was going to end with her rape, or murder, or both, despite the reassurances they'd given her.

But no. The thief had made one last creepy overture, running his fingers through her hair from root to tip, then, unbelievably, he'd drawn back. She heard his bootsteps receding, heard rubber against gravel as the car took off again, and then the sound of the engine faded and ultimately disappeared completely.

She'd waited beside the empty road with her eyes closed for what felt like an hour, though it was realistically only a minute or two, waiting for the other penny to drop. When it became apparent that she was well and truly alone, she finally, slowly opened her eyes.

They'd left her phone in her purse. She called the police. The police came and picked her up.

Even then, it wasn't over. She'd had to go back to Chumash and endure hours of questioning from the police once they'd failed to find the thieves the night of the robbery. In a stunning display of disordered priorities, the first line of questioning she underwent seemed designed to ensure she wasn't in on it.

To an extent, she sympathized—from what she gathered from the tidbits the police kept letting slip combined with what she'd heard in the exchanges between the robbers themselves, the robbery was a blindside, a fluke—police response was initially poor and backup was delayed, so much so that the thieves had slipped out of town without any trouble. They'd tried to compensate by sending extra units immediately to her location as soon as the thieves dropped her off in hopes of chasing them down, but it was a desperate effort, and a futile one. The men were gone, taking a quarter million in cash and valuables with them.

Six cops were dead. It was embarrassing, and the police were looking for someone to blame. Their eyes fell on Evelyn. She dealt with over an hour of exhaustively detailed questions, ranging from pointed but not explicit ones like _how long have you been working at the bank? Why did you want this job?_ to more overtly suspicious queries like _why did they take_ _ **you**_ _? How do you explain the fact that you were left alive and unharmed?_

It was enough to make her want to tear her hair out, but fortunately, Evelyn was typically calm under fire, and after the day she'd had and the fears she'd nursed for that nightmare hour, the interrogation was easy, if exhausting. After a while, she could tell that they were bottoming out. They had nothing on her, because nothing was there.

That was when they finally (and way too late for them to get any kind of jump on the thieves, in her opinion) started asking questions about the men themselves. There wasn't much she could tell them. The men had been careful; she hadn't seen their faces or heard their names. All she could give them was the respective races of the robbers, T's eye color, the fact that there seemed to be a rift, though not insurmountable, between T and one of the other men, and, finally, their approximate accents: the only one she was certain of was T, whose 'out's and 'sorry's betrayed him as being indisputably Canadian, but the one in the passenger seat was probably from somewhere in the Midwest, and the driver sounded like he was a West Coast native.

She noticed that every time she gave them a new fact about "T," the detectives would exchange a _look._ When she got to the part about his Canadian accent, they pushed back from the table in unison, and the older one growled, "Trevor Philips."

Seeing the other one nod grimly, Evelyn demanded, "What, who's Trevor Philips? Is that T?"

"Sounds like him," answered the younger detective grumpily. "Ex-Canadian scumbag, psychopath, under suspicion of—well, shit, probably hundreds of unsolved crimes ranging from arson to murder, sometimes both at the same time. Real piece of work, self-proclaimed criminal mastermind. If it _was_ him, then you're lucky you got out alive. He's not much for leaving loose ends—but then again, he's unpredictable, so who knows?"

"Wait a second," Evelyn said, feeling a flare of temper and trying very hard not to let it show. "If you know who this guy is—if you know he probably committed those crimes he's suspected of and is _obviously_ dangerous—then why the hell isn't he in prison?"

The detectives exchanged a glance, and this one was much more on the embarrassed side. "He's off the radar," confessed the young one. "You'd think a guy like that would have trouble laying low when he needed to, but he's all over the place. We haven't yet been able to corner him or find a safe house harboring him—but we're working on it."

There was a lot that Evelyn could say in response to that, but most of it seemed unwise. After a second spent sorting through her options, she placed her hands palms-down on the table, looked from one detective to the other, then said, "If he's all over the place… then what are the odds he'll come looking for me?"

The older detective was quick to reassure her. "Not good. He'll know we're looking for him; he'd be an idiot to show his face here again anytime soon. He won't come after you. I promise."

Evelyn was fairly sure that wasn't a promise he could really _make,_ but otherwise, she believed him. It was true that she had some lingering fears—standard for people who'd been through a traumatic experience at the hands of their fellow human beings, especially if those human beings were still alive, still out there. In this case, though, if what the detective said was true, then those fears were illogical, and she endeavored to put them out of her mind.

The questioning fizzled out soon after that. It seemed that the discovery of Trevor Philips' involvement took the wind out of the police's sails—they made a perfunctory effort to appear optimistic, but Evelyn could tell that their hopes were low. It wasn't exactly encouraging, but it at least had the benefit of cutting the interrogation short.

After that night, faster than seemed possible, things returned to normal. The sun rose and set. Evelyn returned to her job at the bank as soon as the insurance money came through and it reopened, and she was welcomed—several tellers had quit after being held at gunpoint and seeing six police officers shot down in the front parking lot, and no one else seemed keen to apply, so her work was needed. She kept an idle eye on the news, just in case anything turned up regarding the robbery, but there was nothing but dead air, and soon enough, the little worries of everyday life obscured the lingering worries, as if the event had just been a figment of her imagination.

Before she knew it, a full month had passed. Spring was giving way to summer, Evelyn's job was stable, and her life was going well.

It was the first Friday in May, and Evelyn was driving home from work. She'd gotten to the point where she felt safe wearing skirts and dresses to the bank again—the incident had her sticking to pants for a few weeks, uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable a skirt left her, but the days were growing warmer, and the distance from the robbery had given her a sense of complacency. It was Friday, it was sunny, and she was cheerful and unafraid, not for the first day in a row. She'd dressed up a little for the day, choosing a white sundress with bright red floral pattern, pairing it with an ivory cardigan to cover the thin straps and make her look a little more professional, and putting her chest-length hair in an over-the-shoulder fishtail braid. She felt safe, confident, and happy.

Of _course_ he would choose that day to careen back into her life.

She got to her neighborhood around five-thirty PM. Well out of college, out of debt, and with a stable, decently-paying, forty-hours-a-week job, she was a.) aware that she was better off than a lot of twenty-somethings in the twenty-first century and b.) in a position to get a condo close to the beach. However, as much as she enjoyed _visiting_ the beach, something about living there rang hollow for her. She'd grown up considerably further away, surrounded by trees and swamps, and the claustrophobia of apartment buildings and the feeling of being exposed to beachgoers' eyes any time she stepped outside or opened her blinds didn't strike her as being a comfortable way to live.

Instead, she found a loosely-spaced, tree-filled neighborhood a few miles off the coast—it wasn't hard; North Chumash was still tiny and relatively poor, unlike its southern counterpart where she worked, and most people wanted to live on or right next to the beach, leaving the space further inland mostly undeveloped. Her neighborhood sprawled, there were cheap privacy fences and lots of untamed foliage to keep the lots separated, and it suited her perfectly. She ended up making payments on a little two-bedroom starter house for about the same rate she'd have been paying to lease a place nearer to the beach.

Everything was perfectly normal when she pulled into her driveway and made the brief trek into her house. If she'd lingered outside for a moment longer, she would have noted the rather haphazard arrival of a battered, rust-spotted red truck on her street.

Inside, she started her usual home-from-work routine, throwing some frozen fruit in a blender to thaw out a little then going back into her bedroom to plug in her phone. She was a bit distracted as she headed back into the kitchen to finish putting together her smoothie—she'd gotten several texts while she was at work inviting her to two separate gatherings with two separate friend groups, and as she went to the refrigerator to get some milk, she tried to decide which group she felt like seeing, or if she'd rather just spend her Friday night alone.

When she closed the refrigerator door, there was a man in her kitchen.

She didn't react right away—she had that dropped-stomach feeling, like she'd just hit the first hill of a rollercoaster, and there was a little part of her brain that didn't believe she was really seeing what she was seeing.

She didn't recognize him. He was about six feet tall, lanky, with a recently-shaved head, heavily lined face, and at least three days' worth of black beard, dressed in an erratically-buttoned red-and-black plaid shirt, stained jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and heavy black boots.

Then he spoke—"Jesus, I guess you didn't get fired, this place is nice"—and she knew, recognizing that broken-glass-and-rusty-nails voice immediately.

Reacting on instinct, she threw the only weapon she had at him: the half-empty half-gallon of milk. He ducked at the last second, and as the plastic cracked against the wall behind him, he yelled, " _Fuck_ me! Time out!"

 _How the fuck did he find me?_ Evelyn thought frantically as she dove for the stove, snatching up a saucepan and hurling it towards his head. It landed a glancing blow on his temple, and she felt a split second's surge of satisfaction before realizing that it hadn't slowed him down in the least, that he was charging straight towards her, and that satisfaction turned to panic as she wheeled around and made a run for it.

She got about two steps away before arms like pinions circled her torso and lifted her off her feet. She swung out with her feet and got a satisfying kick in to his shin before he _growled_ and flung her sideways, and, unable to stop herself in time, she collided headfirst with her kitchen counter and everything went black.

She drifted in and out for the next minute or so, vaguely aware that he was bending over her and pulling her hands behind her back and that she needed to _do_ something but unable to get a response from her hands or feet other than feeble twitching. By the time the dizziness receded a bit and she was able to actually control her muscles, her arms were secured behind her back, a strip of duct tape was pressed across her mouth, and he was grabbing her by the shoulders, yanking her upright.

She immediately relaxed her legs, figuring that if this was a kidnapping then should at least make things as hard for him as possible—she sure as hell wasn't walking out of her house on her own two feet. The plan backfired as he let her slip right out of his hands and she fell hard on her side on the ground.

His voice sounded from somewhere above her. "That's cute and all, babe, but time's kinda short. I _thought_ I'd make sure you were comfy in a chair while I handle things, but I've got no problem leavin' you on the floor instead. Now. Wanna try again?"

 _Handle things? What the fuck is he talking about?_ She didn't have time to puzzle anything out before he was reaching down to pick her up, and this time, still scared out of her wits but sensing that he was dead serious about leaving her helpless on the ground (and also not keen on being dropped again), she got her legs under her. "There, _that's_ better," he grumbled, steering her over to the little four-person table and shoving her into one of the chairs.

She lifted her head, trying to get a good look at his face, maybe get a sense for what, _exactly,_ was going on, but he stepped around behind her almost immediately. Reflexively, uncomfortable with him out of her line of sight, she tried to stand, but he gripped her wrists and yanked her back down. She considered struggling more, but really, her head was spinning from the collision with the countertop, her attacker was behind her, _and_ her hands were tied—as much as she hated it, she figured she'd better make peace with imprisonment, at least temporarily.

There was a rattling sound—a ziptie being pulled—and then she felt the air shift behind her as he stood. An experimental tug at her hands confirmed what she suspected: he'd looped a tie through her already-bound hands and locked it around one of the thick spokes of the chair.

Practically speaking, she was fucked.

He circled around again, dropping to a crouch in front of her so he could look her in the eyes. "Anyone else in the house?" he ground out, making a show of lowering his voice. Before she could act on any poorly-advised instincts, he spoke again: "Think that one through carefully before answering, sweetheart."

Well. He'd tied her to a chair; he obviously was planning on sticking around—which meant that he probably wouldn't be scared off if she claimed someone else was home. That would only result in him searching the house and exposing her for a liar. She'd seen him lose his shit over her making an obliquely rude _remark_ to him; she didn't really want to find out how he'd react if she lied to him outright.

Still, it seemed infinitely stupid to just admit to the fact that she lived alone.

 _Ah, fuck, it's not like I have any other options,_ she thought, and rather angrily, she met his eyes and shook her head.

He cocked his to the side. "You sure? Grandma jumps out and startles me while I'm holdin' the shotgun and—well, let's say that my trigger finger doesn't react _well_ to being startled."

Evelyn shook her head again, more vehemently this time, and he seemed to believe her, rocking back on his heels. "O _kay_ , then, Evy, listen up. I'm gonna step out here for about, ehh, thirty seconds, then I'm coming back. If you think you can wiggle your way out of here and call the fuckin' _cops_ in that span of time, then be my guest, but fair warning—if I find that you've moved a fucking inch, I will rip out your entrails and _feed_ them to you, is that understood?"

Evelyn, looking into his eyes, found that she believed every word. Slowly, she nodded.

He patted her on the knee, leaving his hand there for just a second too long, fingertips resting on the inside of her leg. "Good." With that, he withdrew his hand, stood up, and left the kitchen.

Evelyn was left tied to a chair with a decision to make—a decision that wasn't _really_ a decision. Every chain email, every self-defense pamphlet, every piece of literature that boiled down to _do this and you won't get raped or serial killed_ was parading through her brain, particularly the part that all of them seemed to include that essentially said _it's better to risk your life trying to escape or get help than to play along in hopes that things won't go bad for you, because they will._

Problem was that she _hadn't_ played along, and things had _already_ gone bad. Add to this the facts that the head injury promised dizziness and a lack of coordination if she tried to move just now and that her phone was all the way back in her bedroom and that it would take her all of the thirty seconds she had just to stumble back there dragging the chair behind her, and she didn't really have a choice.

Still, it hurt her to just sit there and wait.

Fortunately, she didn't have to do it for long. A commotion in the front of the house alerted her to Trevor's return, and then he was blasting his way into her kitchen, holding a battered metal case in one hand and dragging another man along with the other, talking as he went: "Ron, Ron, _Ronnie._ I don't know why I picked you up off the ground and dragged your worthless carcass out of that fuckin' _shitstorm_."

"S-sorry, Trevor," gasped the new guy in a thin, nervous voice, clearly in pain. He was shorter than Trevor and he seemed older to her, though it was hard to tell—it may have just been the clothes; he was dressed in a button-up open over a dirty t-shirt and khaki shorts topped off by a fisherman's hat. There was a sizable bloodstain on the thigh of his shorts, and judging by the blood running down his leg, it was fresh. "You're right. I'm worthless. I don't know why you put up with me."

Judging from their respective appearances, as well as what she knew firsthand of Trevor, Evelyn highly doubted Ron should be apologizing for anything, but it wasn't as if she could voice the thought. Understandably, Ron was whimpering as Trevor none-too-gently heaved him up on the counter. Evelyn let out a soft groan of frustrated protest against the duct tape and was ignored.

"Oh- _kay,_ let's see what we got here," said Trevor, hauling the metal case up to the counter and wrenching it open. Evelyn craned her neck to see the contents, but the counter was set at her eye level; she didn't have the vantage to see into it.

Fortunately, she wasn't long left to wonder. Trevor emerged from the box with a gleaming pair of scissors, and in seconds, he was hacking away at Ron's bloodied pant leg, severing the fabric at the upper thigh and casting the drenched cloth off to the formerly clean kitchen floor.

Evelyn could see the problem area then, a sizeable hole a few inches above the knee, pumping steady rivulets of blood onto her countertop. Trevor dropped the scissors and went digging around in the case, making an awful racket until he finally found what he was looking for, holding up an ugly pair of forceps with a gravelly "Ta-daaa!"

"Tell me you are _not_ about to extract a fucking _bullet_ on my countertop," Evelyn said, not even caring that her words were rendered incomprehensible by the tape.

Trevor leaned backwards to get a better look at her past the counter and said, "Huh? What's that, Evy? You're gonna have to enunciate a little more."

Evelyn gave him a look that she hoped properly conveyed the gesture she'd have given him if her hands had been freed. He waved a dismissive hand at her and returned his attention to his injured friend… or underling, or lackey, or whatever the guy was.

"All right, Ron," Trevor said, prodding at the bloody skin by the hole with a fingertip and making Ron flinch. "You got a bullet in your leg, and it's gotta come out, one way or another."

"You do it," Ron pleaded. " _Please_. I _can't_ go to the hospital—even if I _did_ have an explanation for the bullet hole, you _know_ what those people are up to! Hospitals aren't even _hiding_ the fact that they're taking DNA samples; _that's_ how complacent they've gotten! You can't let them get their hands on me!"

Evelyn's eyebrows shot up. Trevor patted Ron on the shoulder. "Ah, you fucking lunatic," he said, his tone halfway affectionate even if his words weren't. "Okay. I'm gonna get this thing out, but if you hit, kick, or deafen me, I'm gonna knock you the fuck out and leave the bullet _in,_ you understand?"

"I understand! Just take it out!"

"Mm, you sure? It's gonna hurt real bad…"

"I _do,_ just _please_ —do it already!"

"Okay," said Trevor, still sounding mockingly doubtful, and he took a step back from the counter, looking around the kitchen. "Shut up for a second, then, let me figure a few things out."

Evelyn was left to choose between trying to precisely identify the creepy dynamic between Trevor and Ron and watching Trevor search her kitchen as if he'd been invited to. It was a mark of how unsettling she found the fact that Trevor made Ron _beg_ him to take the bullet out that she chose the latter.

He rummaged around in drawer after drawer and cabinet after cabinet, pausing when he reached her medicine cabinet and glancing over at her. "Ahh, fuck, Evy, I was _afraid_ you were gonna turn out to be boring. What is this, _aspirin?_ "

Evelyn glared at him. Ron stammered, "C—can I have some?"

"Ehh, we'll get you hooked up in a minute," Trevor said, distracted by the contents of a drawer.

"Why not _before_ you jam a sharp piece of metal into his leg?" Evelyn muttered, too annoyed to be much deterred by the muffling tape (in fact, a little bit grateful—this gave her the opportunity to smart off without putting herself in danger of being understood). Judging by Ron's face, he seemed to be wondering the same thing as she was, but it appeared that he was reserving his bravery for the extraction, because he didn't say anything.

Trevor returned with a few sturdy kitchen towels. The first one, he used as a tourniquet, tying it hard above the bullet hole. The second one, he gave to Ron with the gruff instruction to "Bite down," and the third, he used to dry the blood off his hands, and Evelyn released an annoyed exhale through her nose. _Those towels_ _ **used**_ _to be white._

(It wasn't even that she begrudged the use of her kitchen linens to help patch up a severely-injured, rather pathetic stranger. It was simply that no one had bothered to _ask_.)

That done, Trevor took up the forceps and clutched Ron by the knee, utterly disregarding the blood now coating his palm. "Ready, pal?"

Ron had screwed his eyes shot and locked his whole body up in anticipation. He gave an affirmative grunt around the towel, and Trevor plunged the sharp tips into the bullet hole.

Okay, so the towel didn't do much to mute the pained howling that followed, but it _did_ take the noise down to a dull roar that was unlikely to call the neighbors running. _So much for that hope,_ Evelyn thought, even as she acknowledged to herself that it wasn't _much_ of a hope—given what she'd found out about Trevor from the police, it would be better for everyone if the neighbors stayed _far_ away. There was enough blood in her house already.

Surprisingly enough, Trevor wasn't digging around in Ron's leg for long before he retreated with a glinting, bloodied piece of metal gripped between the tips of the forceps. He held it up to the light, and Evelyn found herself thinking it was much tinier than she expected it to be after drawing all that blood.

"Ahh, look at that, you see?" Trevor said, thrusting the bullet up practically under Ron's nose.

Ron removed the cloth from his mouth and said, weakly, "Is that it?"

"Goddamn right it is. You were lucky, Ronnie. They weren't using hollow points. Pretty clean, all things considered. C'mon, hold out your hand."

Ron looked startled, but after a second, he clearly guessed what his companion was up to, because he started stammering again. "I—that's okay, Trevor, I… I'd rather just get rid of it."

Trevor stared at him in disbelief. "Get rid of it?"

"Y-yes?"

"Ron, you've been working with me for, what is it, a year now? And somehow, _miraculously_ given your tendency to fuck up, you've never gotten shot, so naturally this little tradition has passed you by, but you always keep your fuckin' first bullet. You'd think a paranoid shitbag like you would be wary of disrupting such a long-held and respected practice, but what the fuck do I know? Open your fuckin' hand and take the damn bullet!"

Cowed, Ron hurried to comply. Trevor dropped the bloody bullet in his hand, then tossed the forceps to the side and dried his hands on the towel before diving back into the first aid kit. Ron was so clearly torn between morbid fascination and disgust at the sight of the warm metal in his palm that he didn't notice the syringe until Trevor had jammed it into his arm, and he yelped so loudly that Evelyn jumped.

"T-Trevor?" he said, still (and probably wisely, Evelyn thought) not raising his voice to the terrifying man despite the fact that he know had a needle in his vein and Trevor was plunging a clear liquid into him without warning. "Wh—what's that?"

"What, you _really_ think I'd have a first aid kit without any morphine? Relax, buddy. Time to go night-night."

Ron and Evelyn wore the same wide-eyed disbelieving expression on their faces as it sank in that the pain Ron had endured during the extraction was completely unnecessary (and a sidenote: that Trevor was an asshole—something Evelyn at least had already figured out, but it was worth remembering). Fortunately, Ron succumbed to the drug and was unconscious and out of pain in seconds.

Unfortunately, Ron's descent into unconsciousness reminded Evelyn uncomfortably that she had been using his unfortunate situation as a distraction from the moment she laid eyes on him, a reminder that was only underscored by Trevor's loud, "Ahh, alone at last, huh, Evy?" as he wiped the blood off his hands.

She had _no_ idea how to proceed. It was a bad habit of hers—finding herself in a bad situation and distracting herself with the first thing of minute interest to cross her path, only to find herself even further up shit creek when that distraction inevitably passed, because she was _paying attention to something else instead of strategizing._ It was a terrible habit, but it was also a coping mechanism, so it wasn't as if she could just get _rid_ of it.

Although sometimes it drove her crazy. Like right at that moment, when she was interrupted in the middle of doing it _again_ when Trevor snapped his fingers, hard, and demanded, "Hey, Evy, where'd you go? You're not one of those people who goes all, what-do-they-call-it, _comatose_ when you're under stress, are you?"

She locked eyes with him—she tried not to, but once she was effectively pulled out of her head she found she couldn't quite look anywhere else, her need to know how this was going to play out outweighing her fear. Once again making use of her love-hate relationship with the duct tape which was about to save her from getting her ass kicked for the second time, she said, incomprehensibly, "The word you're looking for is _catatonic._ "

"You know, the whole _point_ of the tape is to shut you up," he said. "Why do you keep talking?"

"Because you don't understand me when I call you a _fucking asshole._ "

He frowned, and she realized that had been a bad move as he circled the counter and started in her direction. "Now, see, that one sounded a little more personal. Were you just cussing me out?"

He paused just in front of her, and again, she told herself not to meet his eyes, that it'd be all over her face if she did, but it was either that or stare at the man's crotch—which was uncomfortably at eye level—so she lifted her gaze to meet his.

Just as she suspected, he read the affirmative in her eyes—at least, he definitely frowned for a split second before breaking into ear-shattering, barking laughter, then he was kicking a chair away to make room for him to sit on the corner of the table, turned towards her. Apparently, playing doctor with another man's bullet wound put him in a good mood, since he didn't seem to mind much that she was swearing at him from behind her taped-shut lips.

"Okay, Evy, here's the deal," he said, shifting to get comfortable on the tabletop, knees sprawling open as he tilted slightly towards her. "That pathetic excuse for a full-grown man over there and I were just heading home, y'know, _minding_ our own _business_ , when _out of the blue,_ a gang of fucking _bikers_ starts a firefight."

_Out of the blue. Right._

"I'll spare you the details, you probably don't wanna know anyway, but the story ends with _Ron_ taking a bullet to the leg, and me, being the good friend that I am, dragged him to the closest safehouse. Which, as you've probably figured by now, is _your_ house. Now, look, we're gonna stick around here for a day or two, lay low—you don't get a say in that. What you _do_ get a say in is how the next couple of days is gonna play out."

He paused, eyed her thoughtfully, and leaned a little closer. "I'm gonna take the tape off so we can have a little conversation. Now, I checked out this neighborhood on the way in; no one's close enough to hear you if you scream—at least not before I _shut you up,_ and believe me, you don't want me to do that. Understand?"

As glad as she was to have a censor for her smart mouth, not being muted by duct tape was infinitely preferable. She only prayed that the hope in her eyes wasn't too obvious as she nodded quickly.

He nodded back, then reached out and grabbed her chin. "Alrighty, then. Time for a little Q&A. Or T&A, whatever, I'm always up for it." Before she could make a contemptuous sound, he'd torn the tape off, and the resulting painful loss of skin cells effectively distracted her.

"Ah… _fuck,_ " she gasped, immediately pressing her lips together to try to soothe them and feeling the tackiness still on her skin.

Trevor let loose with what she could only describe as a cackle and crowed, "That'll wake you right up, huh, sugar?"

In lieu of a hostile retort—and she definitely had a few in mind—she met his eyes and demanded, "How do you know where I live?"

He lifted his eyebrows. "Wow. That's—that's really what you're going with? Not _who are you_ , not _what do you want with me,_ not _are you going to kill me_ , but _how do I know where you_ _ **live**_ _?_ "

"I mean… those other ones, too. Except the _who are you_ one. I know who you are."

"Oh, you do?" he asked, sounding more pleased than concerned. She should've known he would take it as a compliment.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to confirm. "Trevor Philips?"

"The one and only!" he roared cheerfully.

She hurried past the topic, lest he ask her how she knew and take exception to the fact that she had identified him to the police (fortunately, he seemed to think it was perfectly reasonable that she'd heard of him and didn't press the issue). "How do you know where I live?" she repeated, a bit more impatiently this time.

"You know, you should _really_ be careful with your driver's license," he said, leaning back a bit. "Your address is on there for anyone to see, if they're looking."

She stared at him, lips parted slightly in disbelief. "You _memorized_ my address?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, you make me sound like some kinda stalker _freak,_ " he said defensively. "Which, yeah, I've done a little stalking before, but not with _you_. I wrote it down _._ I mean, I had to remember it until I could find something to write it _with_ , but—"

She let out a huff of disbelief, twisting her wrists against the zipties even though she knew they wouldn't give, just to have some outlet for her annoyance. "For the record, I didn't _let_ you see my license. You _took_ it from me."

"Aww! And here I was, scared that you wouldn't remember the details of our first date."

"Oh, believe me, dude, you're _plenty_ memorable," she assured him, realizing even as she heard her own cavalier tone that she was engaging in another one of her coping mechanisms, the same one that had her making the _hivemind_ crack last time she saw him. She had a tendency to distance herself from scary or uncomfortable situations to the extent that she felt perfectly at ease starting a running sarcastic commentary—at least, until that commentary started getting her into trouble.

 _Just like it's about to,_ she thought as his eyes flashed and he bolted to his feet, a move that had the uncomfortable effect of bringing her face-to-face with his crotch again. At least when he was sitting, it had been further away.

She didn't think her discomfort could be magnified, but then he was sinking down slowly, crouching until he was looking her square in the eyes. _His_ were a rather unsettling shade that she'd never seen prior to meeting him, a catlike yellow-brown, not green-tinted or flecked through with gold or brown like the lighter browns she'd seen before—nothing pretty about them, not even their unnatural (and frankly frightening) brightness. She wondered what, exactly, was the source of that brightness, and almost as quickly decided that she didn't want to know. Instead, she made herself match him, stare for stare, as terrifying as his was.

The blowup she was mostly anticipating never happened. Instead, after staring at her for a few seconds longer than she thought was necessary, he said, very slowly and very clearly, "You are _derailing_ the _conversation_." She found it wisest not to say anything. After another second, he resumed, though he didn't return to his more comfortable position on the table. (Well, it was more comfortable for _her,_ anyway.)

"What we're _talking_ about is the impending captor-hostage situation that's gonna be happening over the next couple of days. It's, what, Friday, and you work at the bank still, right?"

She could see where this was going, but there was no way pretending that she had work over the weekend was going to get her out of this. Somehow, she doubted nothing short of murder would sway him from his plan, so, shoulders slumping slightly, she admitted, "Yeah."

"Great, so you've got the weekend off!" he said, sounding way too excited about it. "Okay, good start. Shouldn't take things more than two days to calm down for the two of us, so here's what I want you to do: think of us as your _guests_ for the weekend. Okay? Make things more comfortable for _everyone_."

She cocked her head, and before she could think it through, she said, "Do _your_ guests routinely tie you to chairs?"

She regretted it as soon as she asked it, and only more still when he made a sound in his chest—a cross between a growl and a purr; she didn't know any actual _human beings_ that made that sound and yet it was all too clear to her what it meant. He didn't even have to _say_ anything to make his meaning clear, but of course, he did: "Only my favorite ones, baby. You wanna give it a shot?"

She rose gamely to his challenge. "Sure. Cut me free; let's switch places."

"Mmm, I'm gonna take you up on that, Evy." The absurd glimmer of hope rising in her chest was shot down almost immediately by his next words: "But not just yet. Business before pleasure, right, sweet cheeks?"

"Right," she muttered, trying to ignore the fact that she may have just inadvertently dug herself into a hole—a hole she was _not_ willing to acknowledge as long as she was able to put it off.

"Cause you bring up a good point—I _really_ don't want to leave you tied to a chair and listen to your whining for two days straight. And, sure, I could put the tape back on, but how fucking _bored_ would _I_ be with just _this_ guy for company?" he demanded, his tone growing increasingly agitated as he thumbed over his shoulder at Ron. "I mean, _fuck me,_ he's bad enough _not_ swimming in a sea of morphine. You wouldn't know."

"…no," she said, staring warily at him, "I… wouldn't."

He flicked his fingers, waving the thought away. "Point is that I'm thinking about giving you… y'know, a trial run. Give you a little bit of freedom, see how that goes."

Evelyn was already nodding vehemently, willing to agree to anything that got her untied and free to move about, but Trevor shoved a finger right up in her face, cutting the motion short. "But if you even fucking _think_ about trying for _help_ —" His voice was getting lower, rougher, and more intense, his teeth clenching like he was getting angry even _thinking_ about it, and she found herself shrinking back against the chair to put every last centimeter of distance between them as she was able—"if you, I dunno, signal a _neighbor_ or call the fucking _police_ … oh. Oh-ho-ho," he growled, "We're gonna have fucking _problems_ , Evy. And you do not _**want**_ a problem with me."

In a second, he'd grasped her face hard with his hand, yanking her unwillingly and uncomfortably close as he ground out the rest: "Don't be _stupid_ and fool yourself into thinking that if you just set someone on me, you'll be okay. You know firsthand that I don't get caught, and if I leave here against my will… I'm _coming back_. Are we clear?"

" _Very_ ," Evelyn said, and she meant it. It didn't take much of a reminder for her to recall everything the police had said about Trevor, and all at once, she was hopelessly certain that the only way she was getting out of this alive was if Trevor said so.

 _So much for an escape plan. Might as well just try to get whatever you can out of the experience,_ she thought, shifting into yet another coping mechanism.

Trevor looked her in the eyes for a second, then released his grip on her face, cuffing her cheek with a sense of affection that felt completely surreal after the blinding anger she'd just seen him pull on in the blink of an eye. Apparently he could discard it just as quickly. _Good to know._

He rose to his feet, stepped behind her, and the sound of a knife clicking open was followed immediately by the feel of her ties snapping free. Relieved that she was at least free to move around again, she brought her hands to her lap and started rubbing her wrists as Trevor strode past her, back into the kitchen.

"So what the fuck've you got to drink around here?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand we're in it now. Oh, before I forget, the "broken glass and rusty nails" descriptor is pulled straight out of a Tom Waits song, "Just the Right Bullets" (can you guys tell I really like music?), so I claim no ownership there.
> 
> Thanks to all of you who read, gave kudos, and commented-- you guys showed a lot of enthusiasm for just a single chapter; you have no idea how encouraging that is to me!
> 
> I hope you like Evelyn some now that you've gotten to know her a bit better. Personally, I think Trevor deserves a bit of smart-mouthing. The jerk. Next up: having safely avoided the police and secured himself a place to lie low, Trevor naturally decides to go back out into public, his hostage in tow. Conversations, arguments, and general yelling ensue. Until then!


	3. Beer Run

As it turned out, Trevor was less than pleased with the alcohol situation in Evelyn's house.

"What the fuck is _this_ horseshit?" he griped, rifling through her fridge as if he had a right.

Evelyn had trailed into the kitchen after him, standing uncertainly all the way across the room, arms folded tightly over her chest. "I mean, I really only keep water, so…"

"Water? What the fuck am I, pregnant?" he demanded, letting the fridge swing shut and moving immediately to the cabinets—cabinets he'd searched thoroughly only half an hour before, but he was apparently desperately hoping that he'd missed something. "You don't even have—ahh, what the fuck do girls drink, Hypnotiq or some shit?"

"Well, maybe if you'd let me know you were _coming_ ," she muttered.

Fortunately, Trevor either didn't notice the sarcasm or he was too wrapped up in his woes to care. He shut the last cabinet door with more force than was strictly necessary, then followed it, his forehead meeting the wood with a heavy _thunk_. "I _really_ hoped you wouldn't be boring," he groaned.

Privately, Evelyn took offense, but she didn't really believe that insisting to this man that she _wasn't_ boring would yield a good result. He'd want her to prove it, and who _knew_ what he'd demand as proof? The man had a damn _cut here_ tattoo dashed across his throat; she found she really didn't want to find out what he considered to be _not-boring._

She didn't have to bite her tongue for long. Abruptly, he reeled his forehead back from its rest against the cabinet, turned towards her, heaved a heavy sigh, and said, "All right, let's go," flicking his fingers at her commandingly.

Evelyn stayed right where she was. "Go _where_?" she asked suspiciously.

He stared for a second, mouth hanging slightly open in disbelief. "Beer run," he said finally, realizing she actually needed it spelled out. "I'm _not_ going through this weekend dry. And, y'know, I'd let you stay and keep watch over _Ron,_ but really, I don't trust you. So you're coming with me."

"You don't trust me to be tied up in my house alone but you trust me being with _you_ around a bunch of strangers," Evelyn said slowly, testing to see if it sounded less crazy coming from her. It didn't.

"Isn't that what I _just_ fucking said?" he demanded, palms open at his waist as if inviting her to fight as he began to pace towards her.

She let him get roughly two steps before sidestepping and blurting, "Okay, fine, let's go." _And I continue to_ _ **suck**_ _at chicken._

He stopped abruptly, let out an annoyed huff, and turned away, heading for the door. Evelyn took a quick step around, then, instead of doing anything _useful_ in the two seconds she had before he checked to make sure she was following, she grabbed the first thing she saw: her purse. She would regret not picking up a steak knife later, but at the moment, it felt oddly comforting to be slinging the strap over her shoulder as she followed him out the door. That way, it almost felt as if she was going voluntarily.

That feeling crashed and burned as soon as she laid eyes on the truck.

It wasn't like she hadn't seen something like it before. Hell, in Louisiana, half the population drove a truck that looked like that. That was precisely why she was wary. Rusty, roofless, seatbeltless, probably with holes going straight through the flooring —she knew _exactly_ how much of a death trap a vehicle like that could be.

She'd come to a dead stop, and unfortunately, Trevor noticed. He swung around, now walking backwards towards the truck but facing her. "Hey—don't tell me you're scared of a little rough and tumble," he called out, not even making the slightest effort to tone down the insinuation.

She sighed, forcing herself to start walking again. "Is there no way we can take _my_ car?" she asked without any hope whatsoever.

"Ummmm… no," he said, slinging himself into the driver's seat and picking up a pair of cheap ray-ban style sunglasses up off the dash, slipping them on as she circled around to the other side.

She shook her head, opened the passenger door, had a moment of terror when she was _certain_ the rusted, creaking thing was going to fall right off the truck (and she had no doubt Trevor would insist on driving it regardless), but it was more durable than it felt and slammed securely into place.

_And now you're stuck in a truck with a crazy man._

She didn't have much time to come to grips with the situation before Trevor reversed so abruptly that she barely had time to keep herself from face-planting on the dashboard. He chuckled and she didn't even deign to shoot him a glare as they peeled out from her driveway.

Evelyn took a second to situate herself, prior experience telling her that the silence wouldn't last long. Sure enough, they'd been driving for maybe five seconds when Trevor started in with that grating drawl of his: "Soooo. Evy. What's your deal, huh?"

"My _deal_?" she repeated, irritable, distracted, trying to figure out if there had _ever_ been seatbelts and if there were any convenient handholds for her to use as anchors. "You don't even have an oh shit handle," she complained.

" _Yeah_ , your deal," he said, ignoring her grumbling. "Couple'a fucking things look to set you apart from the usual Los Santos zombie; I want you to prove me right."

"Things like _what,_ exactly?"

"You're twenty-seven."

"Genius observation."

"Not married, not engaged, I don't see rings on that fucking finger."

"I'm flattered that you looked."

"Hey, look, you can flirt with me later, I _want_ you to, but I'm trying to get to the bottom of something right now."

Evelyn scoffed. "By all means, go on."

"All right, so you've got a stable job, nice house, no roommate. Where are your friends? Where's the _boyfriend_?"

"Okay, who's flirting with _who_ again?"

He looked at her over the sunglasses. "Oh, believe me, baby, when I'm flirting with you, you'll fucking _know_ it."

"Yeah, kinda got that sense," she muttered.

He pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. "All I'm saying is that you seem a little isolated."

"You've met me twice! The first time, _you_ isolated me, this time you jumped me in my house, where I live _alone_."

"Yeah, my point exactly. You live _alone._ Not only that, but you're a _woman_ living alone in a _beach town_. That don't happen unless you're stupid or self-isolated, and given the fucking _textbook_ you carry around in your purse—"

"I'm not _isolated_."

"Suuure, you're not. You're just hanging out by yourself on Friday night in your house in the middle of the woods."

"Dude, I have _friends,_ " she said, starting to get annoyed. "In fact, if you'd been half an hour later you'd have arrived at an empty house and I'd be out with some of them."

"Look, I'm just saying it's a little _weird,_ all right? Looks to me like you're alone on purpose. That doesn't exactly fit with a standard beach-dweller lifestyle; these people might as well be _dead_ if they're not around other people."

"And let me guess, you think that's something to look down on." She knew she was treading a fine line—was actually surprised that she hadn't triggered some sort of explosion yet, but the longer he went without reacting badly to her sarcasm, the less she tried to rein it in. _This is going nowhere good._

"Not being self-reliant? Yeah, I really fucking do."

"People thrive in different environments. My preferred environment just happens to be… a quieter one."

"With a bunch of fucking books."

"Hey, you know what? Believe it or not, and with the exception of _your_ involvement, I'm living my dream life. I'm independent and uncommitted. There's no one around to bother me, I spend my time time engaged in things that I'm interested in, and I'm happy."

"I _fucking_ knew it."

"What, that I'm happy?"

"You're _hiding_ from people."

"Thank you for that stunning insight, Dr. Freud."

His quick glance in her direction was the only warning he got before he swerved sharply into the other lane then back again, effectively smashing her head against the door. Stunned, she didn't react right away, and before she had time to recover, Trevor was yelling at her: "You know, I've had about e-FUCKING-nough with the little _sarcastic quips_! I'm here trying to have a nice conversation, to _get to know you_ , and all you seem to be able to do is give me _shit!_ You are a _rude fucking person,_ Evelyn!"

"I'm sorry," blurted Evelyn the second he paused long enough for her to get a word in. He laughed angrily, making it clear that he didn't believe her, and she rushed to explain—anything to calm him down and to make sure she didn't end up dead on the side of the road somewhere. "Look, I _am,_ okay? I know I'm testing your patience. It's—when I'm scared or stressed out, I deal with it by acting like a complete asshole. Like no one can hurt me if I hurt them first."

He didn't say anything, which was worrying, given that he wasn't really inclined to silence. She sighed, drawing her braid nervously over her shoulder and then smoothing her bangs back from the spot on her forehead that had collided with the door. "It's… a coping mechanism. A really shitty one."

He chuckled low again, though this time the growling sound was a little less threatening. "You're not fucking lying about that," he told her. He fell silent, just long enough for her to wonder how, exactly, he was planning to murder her, then, abruptly, he said, "Okay, _fine._ I _accept_ your apology."

It was such a weird thing to say so soon on the heels of a tantrum that she stared at him for a second, trying to see if he was fucking with her. Apparently not, because he went on, resuming the conversation like he _hadn't_ just battered and bellowed at her: "So are there any _other_ shitty coping mechanisms I should know about? I already know you zone out when you probably shouldn't. What else?"

And Evelyn froze. Because whatever intuition he had that told him she had plenty of ways to deal with trouble was right, and he was hovering right over the big one.

 _Nothing, really, I just study what scares me so I can learn not to be afraid of it,_ she thought, and it was the truth. It was a long-held belief of Evelyn's that you couldn't be afraid of something if you really, truly understood it, and thus far, the tactic had worked for her. She'd gotten over her fear of snakes by learning about them. She'd gotten over her fear of guns by taking gun safety classes and learning how to shoot. And now, crazy or not, she was going to try to get over her fear of Trevor by learning what made him tick. Seeing people as projects made them less intimidating.

But there was no way she was going to tell _him_ that. Given their situation, her being petrified of him worked to his benefit; if he got the sense that she was trying to figure him out… well. She didn't think his reaction would be a good one.

She managed to figure out an acceptable response in just a second or two, not long enough to rouse his suspicion. "I'm usually either distancing myself from the situation _or_ I'm concentrating way too hard on what's going on. Like, I forget to speak, because I'm too busy making sure I'm aware of everything that's happening."

"Yeah, I actually noticed that," he said dryly. "Kind of a boring fucking way to deal with excitement."

"You've made it _pretty_ clear that you think I'm boring; are you really surprised?"

There was a short pause, then, to her surprise, he said, "Yeah, a little bit. You've got a lot of interesting things _about_ you, Evy, little bit of fire in the blood. I can tell. So, yeah, it's a little weird that you choose to live so _safe._ "

Evelyn hesitated, at a temporary loss for words. _This is crazy. He's spent all of an hour with me and he's talking like he thinks he knows me._ Even more unsettling was the creeping feeling that he might have already seen a little more of her than she was comfortable with. She settled on a non-reply that would hopefully discourage any more discussion of the topic: "You really don't know me well enough to say that with any confidence."

He looked over at her, giving another one of those suggestive growls. "Maybe not, but I'm _more_ than willing to _get_ to know you."

Fortunately, Evelyn was saved from having to come up with some kind of response to that by their arrival at the supermarket. Trevor "parked" the truck—meaning he stopped the truck vertically spanning three parking spaces before climbing out. Evelyn shook her head, thinking _it's like he_ _ **wants**_ _to get caught_ before scrambling out to follow him.

Unexpectedly, he came around the truck to meet her. She flinched back, but he seemed not to notice, slinging an arm over her shoulders like he was entitled and starting towards the store entrance. She moved with him—she couldn't exactly do anything else—but she wasn't happy about the situation. She'd chosen to wear heelless boots instead of pumps that day, and she didn't like that without the extra height she fit neatly under his arm, that her head barely cleared his shoulder. She didn't like that she could feel his body heat through her cardigan and his shirt—he ran hot, like he was sick or on something (and judging by that weird brightness in his eyes, it was probably the latter). She didn't like that she could smell him, a combination of sweat and dirt and metal tied up by something acrid and chemical, and most of all, she didn't like that she had no idea how he'd react if she shoved him away, so she just had to deal with it.

"And on the topic of fucking," he said as they crossed the parking lot, an opening that snapped her out of her moody discontent fast in favor of alarm, "what're the odds that you and I'll be knockin' boots before this is over?"

Icy fear prickled at the back of her scalp. _Distract, stall,_ she thought, and she blurted, "What's the success rate for that approach?"

"What, complete honesty? Probably higher than you'd think, but the past don't exactly matter. All that matters right _now_ is how _you_ feel about it."

Evelyn was silent for a moment as she tried to figure out how best to navigate what could potentially be a minefield. _Well, he's_ _ **asking**_ _you, not threatening you yet, so… that's a good sign, right?_ Still, there were facts that she couldn't ignore, for all that she'd been trying for the past hour. Facts like that he was her captor and she was his hostage, like that he was taller and stronger and a _hell_ of a lot crazier than she was. Facts like that if he decided he wanted sex regardless of her consent, then there was no way in hell she could fight him off.

There was a reason she'd been avoiding thinking about it. It made her feel scared and sick, and she wished she was _anywhere_ but in this parking lot pinned to the side of a man who was holding her hostage for the _second_ time.

A man whose grip on her arm was tightening. "Evyyyy?" he crooned, shaking her a little. "Where'd you go?"

They were alone in the parking lot, but they'd soon enter the store, and she wouldn't be able to have this conversation with him around other people. She reached up, took hold of his hand, and slipped out from beneath his arm, pulling him to a stop. "Can I be totally honest with you?" she blurted before she could talk herself out of it.

He turned slightly so they were standing face-to-face and stared at her, looking like she'd just asked him if the sky was blue. "Word of advice. _Always_ be totally honest with me."

She wasn't just going to come out and say _I'm scared you're going to rape me,_ wasn't keen to bring the idea to the forefront of his mind, but she _could_ try to make him understand what was going on in her head. Quietly, keeping careful control of her voice, she said "You scare the living shit out of me. I saw you kill those cops the day you robbed my bank, _six_ of them, just mowed them down like it was _nothing_ , and I don't for one second believe that you'd have any qualms about killing me, too."

He was starting to look at her like she was spouting Latin. She got to the point. "I'm in survival mode, okay? I'm focused on getting through this alive. Figuring out whether or not I want to fuck you? It's at the _bottom_ of the list of my priorities, given the situation."

"Oh, Jesus Christ," he muttered, glancing towards the entrance of the store, and for one terrifying second, her stomach dropped and she was certain that she'd said _exactly_ the wrong thing. Then he was looking at her again, voice loud—but not, she thought, angry. "This is what I'm talking about, Evy, huh? You're playing it _safe._ Scared of your fucking shadow! Yeah, okay, so _sure_ this is a home invasion scenario, sure you're in danger of getting iced if something goes wrong, but that doesn't mean you have to act like you're fucking dead _already_! Jesus, you think you'd be _excited_ to get whatever joy you can out of life while you still have the time."

Evelyn actually took a step back at the conclusion of his rant, feeling like the words might physically knock her over. She considered them for as long as she dared, then, before he could start in again, she said, "Maybe you're right. But I don't know how I'm supposed to change an instinctive fear response."

"Easy," he said dismissively, grabbing her hand and starting towards the store entrance again. "You practice. And you _gotta_ trust me, Evy—that way's _way_ more fun. And I'm not just talking about fucking. I'm marking you down as a 'maybe' on that subject, by the way," he tossed over his shoulder as he entered the store.

"Great," she muttered as she moved to keep up. The 'maybe' status wasn't reassuring, but the fact that he was bothering to _ask_ was highly encouraging in itself. It pointed to the absence of a rapist mentality. She could work with that.

The store was quiet, which she was rather grateful for. The more people around, the harder it would be to resist the temptation to try and signal someone for help. Instinct and a lifetime of reading lurid accounts of abductors and the way they thought and operated made her think that it would be worth the risk of getting caught and being exposed to his anger, anything to be rescued. However, prior experience with him combined with her tendency to act on what she _thought_ rather than what she _felt_ made her certain that the impulse to get free _right now_ at any cost was a bad one. She'd seen him kill. She'd witnessed his unpredictable temper. She'd heard from the police what he was capable of and knew that he was very hard to catch, substantially decreasing her odds of a happy ending if she _did_ manage to get someone's help.

The rational conclusion was the one that looked the craziest on the surface, she decided as she trailed along behind him. She was going to play along with him as much as she could. He could be lying about leaving her alive and well if they made it through the weekend without incident, but he definitely was _not_ lying about getting revenge in the event that she ratted him out. She knew that most abductors kept their captives subdued by grandiose threats, threats frightening enough to make those captives ignore their own self-preservation instincts but usually totally hollow.

Trevor was different.

They reached the beer aisle, and she watched him as he strode past the six-packs to the more substantial cases. She was suddenly hypersensitive of their movements—now that she'd decided that they couldn't be exposed, she was worried that one of them would look guilty, set someone's suspicions buzzing.

In Trevor's case, she decided that he might attract _attention_ , but it wouldn't be because he looked _guilty_. The opposite was more accurate—he walked like he owned the world, slightly bowlegged, feet pointed out, taking his time but moving with loud energy. This was a guy who did nothing quietly, and she was starting to understand why the cops were so perplexed by their inability to catch him. It didn't seem fair.

She stood slightly to the side, arms crossed tightly as he browsed the fridges for a few seconds before throwing open the door and grabbing one 12-pack of midrange beer… the another, then another, carrying two precariously under one arm and balancing the other on his opposite shoulder. "Okie-dokie," he said, turning back to her, "let's go."

She turned and walked along with him willingly enough until she realized that he was walking towards the exit, clearly with no intentions of making a stop at the checkout to actually _pay_ for it. She stopped dead.

It took him a second to register that her footfalls had stopped, but once he did, he swung around with a gravelly groan of frustration. "What _now_?"

She whispered fiercely, not wanting to tip off any employees. "You should pay for that."

He looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Why?"

She shook her head in disbelief. _How the_ _ **hell**_ _is he not in prison?_ That was around the time she realized that she wasn't only going to be responsible for watching her own step throughout this ordeal—she was going to have to manage _him,_ too, since she doubted he'd take into account exactly whose fault it was that the police were descending upon them before exacting bloody revenge.

Oddly enough, this calmed her. Knowing what she had to do always anchored her thoughts and feelings; she was able to align them with the task at hand and banish all other distractions. Calmly, she approached him and took one of the cases from under his arm, and he let her, watching with wary curiosity.

Once she had the case in her arms, she met his eyes—he was still wearing those cheap sunglasses, but the lenses were transparent enough that she could be sure that he was looking at her. "Let me buy them," she said clearly.

She watched his face as he processed the request, watched his gaze flick rapidly from one of her eyes to the other, searching for an ulterior motive, finding none, realizing what her sudden cooperation meant. After just a second, his face relaxed, and he pulled the last case onto his free shoulder to mirror the other one. "Hey, fine by me. I always wanted a sugar mama," he said, turning and starting towards the nearest checkout aisle. "Always pictured someone a little _older_ than you, but ehh, I'm not picky."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TREVOR'S REALLY FUN TO WRITE, YOU GUYS. You know. In case you were wondering. Which- if you haven't noticed, this entire fic is just one big excuse for me to write Conversations With Trevor Philips. What can I say? I dig the guy's brain.
> 
> This chapter was kind of short, I know. Next one will be a little longer and things start getting... well. Interesting. You'll see. Everyone who left kudos or commented: I love you; it means a lot to me and is super motivating. Thank you so much!


	4. Neighborhood Watch

The aisle Trevor chose happened to be the cigarette aisle, and Evelyn couldn't resist. She got a pack of menthols.

The dead-eyed clerk checking them out looked at her, looked at Trevor, and didn't say a word about identification. He just got her the cigarettes.

"Those things'll kill you, you know," Trevor told her as she carefully and in his clear view drew out her wallet.

She shot him a quick glance before swiping her debit card. "It's a special occasion." In reality, she only smoked when she was at her most stressed, but she didn't know how he'd react to her saying that in front of the clerk. Best to play it safe.

"Mmm, that's what I like to hear," he said, bumping her hip with his crotch. She managed to avoid elbowing him in the gut per reflex, but shot him a warning look, to which he thankfully didn't seem to take offense.

The clerk gave her the receipt and cigarettes, and she hurriedly thanked him as Trevor took hold of the beer once again. She led the way out to the parking lot, not wanting him to have the chance to engage the clerk in any way.

She needn't have worried. His attention was on her. He trailed her closely as she made a beeline for his truck, drawling, "In a bit of a hurry, are we?"

She shot him a glare as she hustled around to the passenger door. "Not for any reason you might be conjuring up."

"Oh yeah?" he asked as he slung the cases carelessly in the truck bed and then joined her in the cab. "How do you know?"

"Because I don't think you're self-aware enough to realize that I was trying to get you out of there before you caused trouble and got the cops called on us." The words were out before she could control them, and immediately she turned to him. "I'm sorry. Shitty coping mechanism in action again."

Trevor didn't comment on the insult, having zeroed in on something more interesting. "Excuse me—the cops called on _us_?"

Evelyn realized her mistake too late. "On _you_ ," she tried to correct herself, but a manic grin had surfaced on Trevor's lined face and was holding strong.

"Oh, no, you definitely said _us_ ," Trevor insisted, and a second later his arm was snaking across the back of the seat to rest on her shoulders. "Does this mean you're… warming up to me?" he asked, voice dropping to a rusty, suggestive purr.

She rolled her eyes and tried to shrug his arm away, to no avail. Of _course_ he'd focus on the only telltale word in the sentence. For all his recklessness, Trevor was turning out to have surprisingly intuitive instincts. Still didn't explain why he wasn't in jail, but it helped. Between his apparent ability to see things about people and therefore manipulate them effectively (he'd already succeeded in getting Evelyn to play along with his crazy) and his tendency to just blast his way through barriers through sheer force of will, she didn't really see walls holding him.

In response to his question, she told him the truth. " _No,_ dude. But you asked me to treat you like a guest and I guess… one can see the merits of that approach. I'd rather be your hostess than your hostage, you know?"

" _That_ ," he said emphatically, "is the smartest fucking thing you've said all night. I like the idea of you _hosting_ me, too."

"Is there any way we can keep the sexual innuendos to a minimum?

"Oh, trust me, babe—this _is_ the minimum."

"Somehow I don't doubt you," she mumbled, leaning forward to escape his arm. He tapped the brakes, she nearly went careening into the dashboard again, and he laughed. "Can you be nice?" she complained, resignedly leaning back against his arm.

He rubbed her shoulder with his thumb. "I can be nice."

"I will believe that when I fucking see it," she said, but he wasn't doing anything to make her feel truly threatened, so she gave up and didn't make any moves to escape his touch again.

There was a brief conversational lapse, which Evelyn actually appreciated. It helped her forget the true scariness of the situation, and for a minute she let herself pretend that she was just out on a nice evening drive with someone she liked. It wasn't hard—the sun was setting, dyeing the sky brilliant shades of purple and orange, the absence of a roof ensured a constant stream of fresh air, and the temperature was cool but with her cardigan and his arm warm across her shoulders it wasn't too cold.

Then they hit the foothills and he took his arm away so he could navigate the twists and turns with both hands. Evelyn shook off the daydream and pried open her cigarettes, punching in the lighter on the dashboard and freeing a menthol as she waited for it to heat up.

Trevor was talking to her again, pitching his voice loud against the wind. "You know, I was serious about the cigarettes."

"So was I. I only smoke when I'm under stress. I doubt one pack will give me cancer." The lighter popped out. She picked it up carefully, pressed the red hot metal against the tip of the cigarette, and pulled. As she gratefully exhaled the first cloud of smoke, her eyes trained on the still-glowing lighter and she thought for half a second about reaching over and jamming it into the side of Trevor's throat.

She'd dismissed the temptation and was putting the lighter back in its place almost as soon as the idea occurred to her. _Knowing my luck, he'd probably be into it._

"Yeah, but one pack leads to another pack leads to another, and sooner or later you've got yourself a permanent crutch. Here." He dug in his pocket and tossed a little baggie at her. "Try that instead."

She picked up the little parcel of soft white pills and examined it dubiously. She already knew she wasn't going to take any, but out of curiosity, she asked, "What is it?"

"Something to perk you up."

"That doesn't answer the question," she said flatly, not bothering to hide her suspicion.

" _Jesus_ , relax. It's speed."

_Now at least I know what he's on, though I almost wish I didn't._ She placed the package on the seat beside her and with two fingers pushed it across the cracked vinyl until it rested in the middle of the no-man's land between them. "No, thank you."

He glanced down at the pills, then at her face, clearly offended. "Why the fuck not?" he demanded.

"You want me to answer as your hostage or your hostess?" she asked after a quick, stressed-out pull on her cigarette.

"I don't care as long as you tell me the fucking truth!"

He was getting impossibly worked up over drugs, and Evelyn really didn't _want_ to dig deeper, but lying or evasion would almost certainly make him even angrier. She tried to keep her voice calm, but she couldn't help letting a little bit of agitation creep through as she said, "Dude, it's _meth._ You want to talk about something that'll kill you? Of course, meth has the added bonus of tearing up your face and body and rotting your teeth from the inside out."

"Only if you're dumb enough to get addicted. It's not the killing that's the real sin, Evy, it's the addiction, the fucking lack of _will power_ that's shameful. You want strength? It's the ability to come and go, take and leave whatever drug you want at will."

"Well, maybe I'm not strong, then. I definitely don't want to find out, so really, thank you for the offer, but I'm not trying speed."

He looked at her, ignoring the road for an irresponsible amount of time. Just when Evelyn was sure his plan was to punish her by wrecking into a ditch somewhere, he grunted and scooped up the bag. "Suit your fucking self. You're wound so tight you'd probably have a bad trip, anyway."

_How do those sour grapes taste,_ Evelyn almost said, but she still had _some_ sort of self-preservation instinct left, so she just stayed quiet, watching as Trevor ripped into the bag with his teeth and shook the pills into his mouth and preparing herself for a hell of a few hours.

* * *

By the time they reached Evy's house, the speed was taking hold, buzzing pleasantly across Trevor's skin, loosening some muscles, tightening others. He pulled into her driveway and barely remembered to put the truck in park before jumping out.

None of the beer bottles had broken during the trip, but a few had been jarred loose from the cases. He ignored them, picking up what remained, and he wasn't entirely surprised when Evy reached in and grabbed the case that had slid over to the passenger side. She seemed to want to help, to prove she was in this with him. It was actually kind of cute, and he cracked a smirk at her before heading into the house.

Her front door was unlocked—not a surprise, since he hadn't really given her time to lock up before they left, but it _did_ remind him. He talked over his shoulder at her as he led the way to the kitchen: "You know, your household security is an embarrassment."

"Thanks," she said, and he detected a hint of annoyance in her tone, though she didn't express it. He'd found out on the way to the store that Evy had claws. It pissed him off, but it also interested him. He kind of wanted to see how deep she'd scratch.

He meant that figuratively _and_ literally.

But that could wait. "No, really," he said as he set the beer on the counter next to a still-unconscious Ron and turned to take the case she was carrying off her hands. "Neighborhood's not gated, you don't have a security system—your door wasn't even locked, for Christ's sake. You gotta do something about that. At least get a dog."

"Oh, believe me, after today, I'll look into it."

He set the final case down and then turned to her, settling his hands on her shoulders. The touch startled her into looking him in the eye, and she finally seemed like she was actually listening, though she seemed a little confused. "I'm serious. This isn't a good place for a woman to live alone."

It took her a second to figure out how to respond to that, during which Trevor reflected that the material of her cardigan was a little rougher than it looked and felt like it was crawling gently beneath the rough skin of his palms, more evidence that the speed was kicking in. He'd have preferred just skin. Finally, she came up with, "Well, like… the _world_ isn't a good place for women to live alone, but I'm… why do you care?"

"What, like I'm some kind of monster?" he asked, suddenly offended, letting his hands fall from her shoulders. "Like I _enjoy_ watching women get hurt?"

"I didn't say that."

"Because I _don't_. I mean. Not unless they're into it, too." He turned away and looked over the kitchen. "Well, _this_ isn't going to work. Hey, Evy, where should I put Ron?"

"There's a closet under the stairs," she said without missing a beat.

"Right." He went to pick up his employee.

"Trevor, I was _kidding._ Come on, follow me, I have a spare bedroom."

Trevor didn't care either way, as long as it got Ron's bloody, doped-up carcass out of the middle of the kitchen. He hoisted Ron over his shoulder, to which Ron responded with a faint twitch and a contented murmur of "Oh, _Marian…_ "

"Uh-oh," Trevor said as he turned to follow Evy down the hall. "No, Ron. We don't like Marian."

"Who's Marian?" asked Evy, sounding like she kind of didn't really want to know.

"Ron's ex-wife."

"Marian," said Ron happily.

"All right, fine, have your nice morphine dream," Trevor yielded as Evy stepped into a room and switched on the light. "But if you get a stiffy, I'll fucking drop you."

The spare room was nice, like the rest of her house. Trevor personally thought everything was a little _too_ clean, and the neatness of it all set his teeth on edge, so he took pleasure in dumping Ron's dirty body on the pristine white coverlet. He shot a glance at Evy to see if she was wincing at the new stain from the mud on his boots, but to his surprise, she was ducking under his arm to roll Ron from his back to his side.

Trevor stared, and once she was done sliding a pillow under Ron's head, she noticed. "What?" she asked defensively, straightening up. "I don't want him to puke and choke on it. Guy's had a rough day already; I doubt he wants to cap it off by _dying._ "

"Nothing, it's just, uh, a nice instinct." He cleared his throat. "Very, um, maternal."

She looked uncertainly at him, and there was an uncomfortable silence, which Trevor ended by turning and leaving the room. He heard the light click off behind him, and then she was following him into the kitchen, where he grabbed a bottle of beer and put a chip in her countertop when he used the edge of it to knock the cap off. Again, she didn't say anything, and Trevor took a long pull from the bottle as he settled onto the counter. The alcohol, faint as it was, washed into his system, smoothing away some of the rough, nervous edges of the speed. He finished the first beer in two long drags and tossed the bottle onto the floor before reaching for another.

"Dude, come on," she complained. She'd retreated to the counter opposite him, where she perched safely above the glass shards now littering the floor, so he didn't really think she had much to whine about.

He didn't acknowledge her protest, then, taking a slower sip from his new bottle before saying abruptly, "You've got some gray in your hair."

She reached up immediately to touch the braid that fell over her shoulder. "Couple of silver hairs here and there, why? Trying to hurt my feelings?"

"Nah, I was just wondering why you don't dye it. Most women your age would freak out."

"I'm twenty-seven, it's hardly unusual to have a little gray at my age—especially in dark hair." He raised his eyebrows pointedly at her over another pull from the bottle and she shrugged. "I don't know, I kind of like it. Anyway, it's hardly worth torching my whole head just to change the color of a few strands."

"Yeah," Trevor said pensively, running a hand over his own head, feeling where the stubble was starting to grow back at the edges. "Yeah, I didn't spot my first gray hair till I was thirty-five. Started balding way earlier, though."

"Um," she said, looking a little uncertain, and he didn't much blame her—it was a weird conversation, but in fairness, consuming beer and speed simultaneously always put him in a weird mood. "Do you always shave it?"

"Huh? No," he said, finishing his second beer and sending the bottle after the first—this time, she didn't even blink when it shattered all over her floor. "This was a necessary evil, apparently. It'll grow back soon." She didn't ask what had led to the haircut, which was good, because he had no intention of telling her that Michael had all but pinned him down and shaved Trevor's head himself after Trevor had an unfortunate run-in with a full sewer during a recent getaway. How was _he_ supposed to know that smell wouldn't wash out? And then Franklin went and burned his favorite pair of sweatpants. Trevor pulled a disgusted face as he started on beer number three. He really needed to find some new friends.

He glanced at Evy and remembered that he was in the process of doing exactly that. Of course, he wasn't being as friendly as he _could_ be, and to remedy that, he reached over and grabbed another bottle, chivalrously knocked the cap off, and held it out to her. "Here."

She looked suspiciously at it, and he sighed irritably. "Jesus, it's a _beer._ I'm not gonna bite you till you ask me to; you gotta quit _worrying_ so much."

She took the bottle then, even mustering up a half-assed "Thank you."

"Ehh, don't mention it."

She took a sip and pulled a face. "Never did get used to the taste of beer," she commented, grimacing at the label.

"No? That's not very American of you," he chastised.

She actually laughed at that. "I'm sorry, I didn't know we were known for our legendary brewhouses," she said, tipping the bottle against her lips and taking another sip, and Trevor immediately had to field the dirty thoughts that flooded his brain in response the way her lips wrapped around the tip, the way her slim throat worked as she swallowed it down. Before he could say something about it, though, she was grimacing and talking again. "Anyway, I thought you were Canadian. At least, you've got a bit of an accent."

He went still as he searched her words or face intently for any sort of smugness or contempt. The last thing he fucking needed was another fucking civilian needling him about his place of birth. Thankfully, Evy's eyes were big and innocent and he couldn't detect anything disparaging in her voice, so he figured the question was probably an innocent one. "Naturalized American citizen these days," he said, a little bit proudly. Sure, he'd gotten his citizenship before the trouble really started, and even though it had been through illegal means (he'd gotten booted out of school at age sixteen; as smart as he was he didn't possess any kind of effective study habits and reading wasn't his strong suit so how the fuck was he supposed to sit and pass a citizenship exam?) but still. He'd earned it; he figured he was allowed to be proud.

"Anyway," he said, taking another drink, "I wouldn't be the one throwing stones about accents, Country."

"You would not _believe_ how much the Louisiana's been washed out of my accent, and yet people act like I'm Forrest Gump."

Trevor snorted. "That's because they all fuckin' sound like Barbie and Ken dolls. Any deviation from the Los Santos fucking norm and they feel the need to comment. Goddamn pricks." He held out his bottle.

She laughed and clinked hers against it. "To varied accents. It's more interesting that way."

"A-fucking-men," he growled, and drained his third beer.

He was in a good place now, the alcohol easing the crawling feeling on his skin and letting him focus more completely on the surge of energy from the meth. He couldn't sit anymore. He launched himself to his feet, reaching in the case for two more bottles and then beckoning to Evy. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" she asked warily, slipping off the counter and picking her way through the broken glass in order to join him.

"What is this, twenty questions? I want to go for a walk, so let's fucking go." He turned without waiting for her, predicting correctly that she'd hurry to follow.

She caught up to him just outside the front door. "If you want to walk, I've got a treadmill," she said, sounding nervous.

Trevor shot her a disbelieving look as he strode into the street. "Are you _fucking_ kidding me? How is that in any way productive? You've got this big sprawling neighborhood and you _pay_ to stay inside and not go anywhere? Unbelievable. I expected better from you, Evy."

"Trevor…" She trailed off, keeping pace at his side. He lifted a beer up to his mouth, using his left-side molars to pry the top off—a tricky maneuver that had left him with a mouthful of blood and glass the first time he'd tried it. Naturally he kept practicing until he got it right. By now he was an old pro, and pulled it off without a hitch.

He spat the cap into the road and glanced at Evy, who was looking at him like she didn't quite know what to do. " _Trevor_ , what? Out with it, princess," he ordered, taking a drink.

"You're not exactly… inconspicuous."

He stared at her, feeling familiar stirrings of anger blooming in his chest. Slowly, he bent to place the bottles on the ground and then straightened up, not breaking eye contact the whole time. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She glanced over her shoulder at the rest of the neighborhood. The sun had set, the streetlights were on, and people were nice and safe in their cozy little houses. It was only once she'd ascertained that they were alone that she looked back at him and decided to answer. "You're loud, you swear a lot, and frankly, you look fucking scary. If I saw you wandering my neighborhood, I'd call the police."

The anger came together, brittle and white-hot and with a meth-fueled sense of certainty. She clearly saw something on his face change, because she immediately took a step back, faintly mumbling, "Oh, shit."

"I look scary?" he repeated, taking a threatening step forward and planting a hand on his chest. "I LOOK FUCKING SCARY?!"

"What the hell, I thought you _liked_ people to be afraid of you?"

"Where the fuck do you get off, judging people on the way they _look_?" he demanded, pressing forward into her space. She flinched back and turned her face away, actively avoiding meeting his eyes. "You know, I thought you were different from these Los Santos _zombies_."

He was just getting started, but to his surprise, aside from the initial instinctive avoidance of his gaze, instead of just cowering and closing her eyes and waiting for him to burn out like most people did, she turned her face to his so abruptly that she bumped his nose with hers. With her face so close, he couldn't help but notice that her eyes had darkened to a blazing, angry green. "Quit talking like you're any fucking better than they are, you pretentious ass," she snarled.

Trevor was actually taken-aback for half a second, and his anger rippled and actually abated a touch—but not by much. It wasn't hard for him to find his momentum again. "Oh, but I _really_ fucking am!" he howled in her face. " _You_ could be, too, if you made any fucking effort! You would call the _police_ on me? Are you fucking _kidding_ me?!"

"You know what, in case you forgot, I met you while you were robbing a bank and murdering _cops_ ," she hissed, obviously trying to keep her voice down but just as obviously having a hard time, "and we may be _playing_ like we're just buddies spending a couple of days together, but in reality if I tried to leave, you'd cut my throat and I can't forget that! Newsflash, Trevor: it's not a _bad_ impulse to want to call the cops on you. I just _can't_."

He released a loud, agitated "Aaaaugh," and started pacing, a tight back and forth path in front of her as he kept his focus on her face, trying to sort through a whole host of conflicting feelings—mostly anger, yeah, he was _vastly_ pissed off, but he was also… kind of impressed that she had the balls to fight back. He never did respect people who rolled over and did whatever he was currently yelling at them to do: see Ron, Wade, Floyd, and countless others who would rather appease him than risk his anger. It made them useful that way, but it also made them fucking _boring_. He was glad she was shaping up to be a fighter. Also incredibly annoyed. And a little bit aroused, but he was being yelled at by a hot woman, so that one was a given.

She stepped closer and wound up for another go, still working hard to keep her volume under control. "Throw a fit about it if you want, but if you go walking around in this neighborhood, someone's probably going to raise the alarm, which would _not_ be good for me, cause you'd blame me, or use me as a hostage while you kill the cops, and who knows how that would end? Believe it or not, in the end, I'm acting in our mutual self-interest."

"You're _profiling_ me," he snarled.

Her jaw dropped. "Trevor, you _are_ the profile!"

"It's shallow, and stupid, and _wrong_ , and you know what?" he demanded, grabbing himself emphatically. " _You_ can suck my cock!"

Her mouth snapped shut and she glared at him so fiercely he thought it was a wonder her eyes didn't burn right out of their sockets. _Good,_ he thought, _give her a taste of her own fucking medicine._

Deciding to give the hornet's nest one more kick for good measure, he raised his voice. "AND THAT GOES FOR EVERY-FUCKING BODY WHO HAS A PROBLEM WITH ME WALKING IN THEIR PRECIOUS _FUCKING_ NEIGHBORHOOD, _"_ he howled, turning to face the rest of the street and spreading his arms open wide. "SUCK. MY—"

It was as far as he got before a hard jerk on his arm had him spinning around again. Reflexively, he cocked back a fist, ready for a fight.

But not a goddamn _kiss._

Before he knew it, her hand was on the back of his neck, her warm body was pressed against his, and she was forcefully pulling his face down so she could plant one right on his mouth.

His response was purely instinctive—his hands found either side of her neck, and his thumbs tilted her chin up so that he could more easily push into her mouth. She was soft, and warm, and matched him in energy, making a low little sound in her throat that shot straight to his groin and had him actually moaning into her. _God,_ he needed to get laid.

Then he realized what she was doing and snapped the fuck out of it. He broke away from her with a snarl, spotted the half-drunk beer bottle where he'd put it on the road earlier, and promptly kicked it up into the air, where it arced thirty yards down the street before landing and shattering. " _FUCK!_ " he screamed to the sky.

He turned back to find Evy looking at her feet, hand fiddling with the hair at the back of her head, clearly embarrassed. Her eyes darted up uncertainly, meeting his for a second, face pale, lips flushed red, and God help him if he didn't want to kiss her again.

He managed to resist, instead storming over to her, stopping a safe foot away, and sticking a pointer finger in her face, other hand curled into a fist that was so tight it squeezed the blood from his knuckles. "Do _not_ ," he said, making a very powerful effort to keep his voice level and his anger from escalating into more yelling, "kiss me if you're just doing it to shut me up. I do not _like_ it. You're taking something good and using it as a tool to try to manipulate me, and I do not like it when people try to manipulate me, Evy."

"Okay," she whispered. She didn't deny it, causing another spike of irrational anger in his chest—he knew what she was doing and she knew it too; it made no sense for him to get angry over her telling the truth, yet here he was. He tamped it down roughly.

"People have been trying to manipulate me my entire fucking life. I _fucking_ hate it."

"I understand," she said, more insistently this time.

Her eyes were huge and dark. He wanted to kiss her again, and under any other circumstances, he'd go right ahead and do it based solely on the fact that he _wanted_ to, but right now, the last thing he wanted was to make her feel like she had any sort of power here. He curled the pointer finger back to form a shaking fist, staring at her, and finally, he dropped his hands to his side, relaxed his shoulders, and muttered, "Let's fucking go."

As he turned away, he spat to the side, because if he didn't get the taste of her out of his mouth he was going to pounce on her and they'd need the jaws of fucking _life_ to pry him off. He bent to pick up the last remaining beer, violently bit the cap off, took a swig to purge the rest of her from his mouth, and continued his walk down the street, Evelyn trailing mutely behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhhh shit. Well, Evelyn's impulse control problems are coming out in full force now. That's certainly opened a door. We'll find out exactly what was going through her head in the next chapter.
> 
> We of course are aware that Trevor doesn't exactly abstain from cigarettes himself, but Evelyn doesn't know that. He sure is preachy for a guy who sleeps in a bed littered with old cigarette butts, isn't he?
> 
> I'm really enjoying writing this (dialogue is my _jam_ and I get the opportunity to write a _lot_ of it in this story so I'm happy as a damn clam over here) and I hope you guys are enjoying reading it. Thank you SO much for all the awesome kudos, comments, and bookmarks. You guys rule.


	5. Pool Party

Evelyn was pretty sure she shouldn't have kissed him.

He hadn't stopped moving for a second since he'd stalked away from her. She was keeping a careful distance, about five feet behind him, but he hadn't looked back at her once. She idly wondered if he'd even notice if she just stopped. _Probably, and that'd give him yet another reason to yell at me, at best._

The silver lining to this great big thundercloud was that the argument had happened in front of her house at the end of the street, far enough away from anyone else that no one had called the cops. Yet. With Trevor storming through the place like it had personally offended him, she wasn't certain how long the uneasy peace would last.

Her eyes trailed to his angrily hunched shoulders and she winced. _Definitely shouldn't have kissed him._

Even aside from the fact that it had seriously pissed him off, it had been an awful idea, because it had unexpectedly thrown her way off balance. She kissed the guy as a means to an end and expected fumbling and bumping and way too much saliva—after all, you kiss a meth head, you don't exactly do it for pleasure. She hadn't expected the eager hands at her neck and pulling chills from her skin, or the enthusiasm and expertise that combined for a startlingly good experience—good enough that she was surprised to hear herself practically purring at his attentions.

She wouldn't be doing herself any favors by lying to herself. At the time, at least, she'd been into it. So had he.

She'd thought.

She probably should have expected the inevitable explosion. Trevor was reckless and uncontrollable and unbelievably lucky, but she was starting to think that at least of half of that luck was good instincts and a sort of animal intelligence that let him know when anyone posed a threat to him. Certainly, she couldn't do much damage to him physically, but he was right: she'd been trying to manipulate him, to shut him up and keep from having to deal with the cops. And hey, in the end, she'd gotten what she wanted, more or less.

Still, there was a little uneasy (or maybe just unhappy) knot in her chest, and she wished she could have a cigarette to loosen it, but even if she hadn't left her new pack in the kitchen, she wasn't brave enough to light one in front of Trevor. Not after that outburst. It didn't stop her from wanting one.

She was distracted from her single-minded wish for a cigarette when she realized that Trevor had stopped for the first time since he'd started walking and had turned to look at something off by the side of the road. She followed his gaze, and her fear of him was swallowed up by a new one. "Um," she said, taking a quick step forward.

"A community pool, huh? Now, that's what I'm talking about," he said, tossing his beer, stepping off of the road, and crossing the grass, and Evelyn hurried to catch up to him, though she didn't quite know what she was planning to do.

"Trevor, wait," she pleaded as he came to a stop outside of the chain-link fence and glanced up to ascertain that the top was standard. The gates were all closed, the lights were off, and Evelyn realized that it must be after nine o'clock already, closing time on the weekends. She'd been with Trevor for about four hours by now. For some reason, it didn't seem that long.

Trevor clearly didn't intend to let the fact that the pool was closed get in the way of his good time. Without even looking at her, he pushed his boot tip into one of the openings, and in a few quick, jerky movements, he'd dragged himself over the top and collapsed rather gracelessly in a heap on the grass on the other side.

Evelyn clung to the fence, watching with a worried furrow in her brow as he groaned and rolled onto his back and laughed for a second before finally pulling himself to his feet. Dusting off his shoulders, he looked expectantly at her.

She knew that he was waiting for her to tell him that the pool was closed, off-limits, that they should leave before the cops arrived, and she _really_ wanted to, but the challenge in his eyes combined with the fact that it wouldn't do any good either way made her suddenly determined not to give him the satisfaction. She steeled her jaw, flashed him a quick, defiant glance, and dug her boot into the fence, hoisting herself over.

He was there waiting for her on the other side, and she had a momentary struggle after getting one leg over the top, trying to figure out how to swing the other leg over without impaling herself on the pointed edges—it had been years since she'd hopped a fence like this. As she tried to figure out exactly how to shift her weight without losing her balance, Trevor reached up a hand to help—except it slipped under the skirt of her sundress, grazing her skin before coming to rest at the back of her thigh, just inches below her ass. She jumped and nearly fell, getting her other leg over in a hurry as she hissed, "Stop trying to cop a feel, you prick!"

"If I ever fail to take the opportunity to cop a feel, you better check my fucking pulse," he said, sounding way too pleased with himself, but he pulled the hand out from under her skirt nonetheless, reaching up to grasp her waist instead, keeping her steady as she jumped the last four feet to the ground.

She wasn't exactly sure how to take this. He hadn't said a word to her since he'd told her off so fiercely; now he was cracking jokes and seemed to be touching her more than he needed to, like he had at the grocery store. Surely he wasn't over it that fast?

She glanced briefly and uncertainly at his face to see if she could figure out what was going on, but he'd already let his hands slip off of her and was turning away, wrestling his shirt over his head. _Right. The pool._ Now that she was inside the fence with him, she was even more certain that this was a terrible idea, but she could hardly say so _now_. Instead she just watched in mute exasperation as the shirt came off, and when she saw him go for his pants she decided that it was a very good time to try to locate the summer constellations.

She'd found Hercules and Scorpius before a heavy splash alerted her to the fact that she wasn't going to catch an eyeful of Trevor if she looked back down, so warily, she turned her attention to the disturbed surface of the water. It was dark enough that she couldn't make out more than his silhouette beneath, and she exhaled suddenly and loudly, feeling like she could breathe for the first time in hours.

Then he surfaced suddenly, sending water splattering everywhere as he drew in a sharp breath. " _Yeah,_ baby! That's what I'm talking about!" he shouted enthusiastically before freestyle-swimming rapidly towards the deep end.

Evelyn shook her head, going over to where his clothes were piled unceremoniously—shirt, jeans, boots, no socks. She picked them up gingerly, taking them with her to a lawn chair, where she sat down to watch Trevor and stand guard until he got bored—which would _hopefully_ be before someone noticed that there were people in the closed pool and called the cops.

He did a few laps before finally treading water in the deep end and rotating towards her. "What are you doing all the way over there?" he asked, and she'd be damned if the man didn't sound a little bit _plaintive._

She wasn't in the mood to sympathize; _he'd_ chosen to swim so it was his fault he was all alone in there, anyway. "Staying dry," she replied primly, prompting an annoyed, dismissive "auugh" from him as he slowly drifted towards her side of the pool. She didn't really feel comfortable saying anything beyond that, still sensitive to the blowup of a few minutes ago, so she just kept her focus on the street beyond, hoping to see any passersby before someone saw _them._

Trevor reached the edge of the pool and folded his arms onto the concrete, and she realized that he was just staring at her. She felt the uncomfortable awareness of it creeping along the back of her neck, but before she could decide what it meant, he said, "Why don't you come over here and let me take a peek at what's under that dress?"

 _Oh._ She'd thought he was done barking up that tree after what just happened.

Apparently not.

She responded with the first thing to cross her mind, an occurrence that only seemed to be happening more frequently the longer she was with him: "It's a dick."

He shrugged. "Hey, if it comes with tits like that, I'm not gonna complain."

She shook her head in disbelief. "Dude, what the hell? You rejected me, like, five minutes ago."

"Noooo," he said, drawing out the word with clear, monotone irritation, "I rejected your efforts to use sex _against_ me, which was a pretty _shitty_ thing to do, by the way. Sex itself? Not the problem."

"Oh." She didn't quite know what to say to that, so instead, she glanced back down at the pile of clothes she was guarding. Noting the absence of a particular article of clothing for the first time, she absent-mindedly asked him, "Do you go commando?"

He laughed loudly. "Shh!" she hissed, immediately recognizing the sort of implication he'd hear in the question. "Someone's going to _hear_ you! I was just trying to figure out if you're swimming in some kind of underwear or not."

"Mmm, why don't you come in and find out?" he asked, tilting his head at her suggestively. "You've already admitted you're curious."

Evelyn glared at him, hyper-conscious of the sudden heat rising in her cheeks and absurdly grateful for the cover of dark—this way she could cover her blushing with exasperation. God only knew what he'd do with the information that he'd made her blush—and he wouldn't even care that it was just because she was embarrassed at being caught off-guard; he'd only take it as proof that she was thinking about his dick. Which she wasn't, except in a purely strategic sense, which she explained to him now: "I'm only _asking_ because I'd like to know that when someone inevitably calls the cops and we get caught, you won't also be in trouble for public indecency, or worse, _streaking_."

Trevor barked out a laugh, then in a high, mimicking voice, he shrilled, "Oh, _streaking_! Public indecency! The _horror_!"

"Suit yourself," she grumbled, dropping her head and playing with a strand of hair that had come loose from her braid and was just doing its own thing beside her ear.

"Oh, come on, don't get mad, I was just kidding," he said, and she heard the water shift as he pulled himself out of the pool. She slapped a hand over her eyes immediately and stretched another out in his direction.

" _Stop!_ I do _not_ want you coming closer unless you promise to me you've got something on, Trevor, I _swear_."

"Good God, boring _and_ a prude," he groaned. "How do you _function_ without just refusing to ever leave your house?"

That was the last straw. She stood up abruptly and stomped right up to him, maintaining eye contact the whole time. He seemed just a little startled by her rapid approach, leaning back a little reflexively as she pushed into his space, but mostly he looked like he was gladly anticipating whatever was about to happen, so she made her tone as biting as possible as she hissed, "I am _not_ boring just because I don't do fucking _drugs._ I am _not_ a prude just because I don't want to see your fucking _dick,_ you understand me? Stop trying to act like you know _shit_ about me based on three hours and your shitty preconceived notions about people; it's _really_ pissing me off."

She regretted the outburst the second it was over. The fact that she'd called Trevor out twice in rapid succession made her uneasy; it wasn't like her. Her whole approach in difficult situations was to refrain from making waves, to play along, to say "yes, sir" and survive—not tell off the guy in charge of deciding whether she lived or died just because he was pissing her off. _What the hell is going on with me?_

Still, she'd made the call, and she was going to have to stick with it—easier said than done, especially as he turned her invasion of his space around on her with one step forward, forcing her back a little unless she wanted his drenched body smushed right against hers. "You're not a prude, huh?" he graveled, tilting his face down a little till it was angled parallel with hers. "All right, then, prove it. Dress, off. You, in the pool. _Now._ "

She stared angrily up at him and was trying to decide whether the satisfaction of proving him wrong would be worth taking the _obvious_ bait he was setting before her—she wasn't too mad to recognize that the situation as he proposed it was a win-win for him, and she was trying to figure out a way to even the playing field when the flashlight beam hit them.

"Hey," said a disembodied voice from the street. "Who's that?"

Trevor immediately threw up a hand to block the light and took a step towards the voice, and Evelyn shamelessly and discreetly moved behind him—after all, if whichever of her neighbors it was recognized her, they'd know exactly where to find her, whereas if they recognized Trevor… well, they wouldn't know he was _staying_ in the neighborhood. It benefited her to keep her head down.

Trevor, charmingly, as was his wont, roared, "Who wants to know?"

"Michael Travers, head of the Homeowner's Association for this neighborhood," the voice replied immediately. "The pool closed half an hour ago."

Already assessing the potential damage, Evelyn finally looked to see if Trevor was wearing anything or if he was just harassing an oblivious citizen while stark naked. Turned out he was wearing tighty whities, but the discovery wasn't much of a relief—they were soaked through and clinging to his ass, nearly transparent. She rolled her eyes and stooped to gather up his other clothes, aware that they were going to need to beat a hasty retreat.

"Oh, homeowner's association, good," Trevor muttered sarcastically to himself before pitching his voice to be heard by the intruder. "I'm Doctor Quentin Pinhead, plastic surgeon and owner of the most expensive fucking house here, so why don't you fuck off and let me swim in peace?" It took all Evelyn's willpower not to snap at him for picking a fight, and she focused instead on discreetly throwing his clothes over the nearest fence.

"Please. Even if I believed you live here, _which I don't_ , the pool closed half an hour ago, and you're in violation of the rules and regulations regarding proper swimming attire. You're trespassing, and I'm going to have to call the police."

"Oh, the fuck you are!" Trevor roared, starting towards the fence, and the flashlight wobbled as Mr. Travers presumably jumped back. It gave Evelyn the window she needed, and she jumped forward to grab Trevor by the elbow and jerk him violently towards the back fence.

"I'm going and you need to come with me _right now,_ " she hissed urgently, and without waiting to see if he was going to take her seriously, she turned and fled to the fence.

"Is there someone else there? Who's that?" demanded Mr. Travers.

"Go fuck your perfectly-manicured hedges," Trevor bellowed at him, but Evelyn could tell by the sound of his voice that he was following her. She hit the fence and was over it in record time.

"Stop! Stop right now! I'm calling the police!"

Trevor hit the ground beside her and she shoved his clothes and boots into his chest before ducking into the treeline just behind the fence. "Follow me and don't stop," she said over her shoulder, then she was focusing on navigating the trees, trying to get them through without getting too badly scratched—they weren't far from a makeshift path that some of the young people in the neighborhood used as a hiding place to smoke weed and drink. It was ideal because it circled around the back of the neighborhood, pretty close to her house, and because older people or authority figures like Mr. Michael Travers were highly unlikely to have heard about it.

For a few minutes, there was no discussion, just the sounds of two adults batting their way through weeds and branches and Trevor cursing a muffled blue streak every five seconds. Finally, abruptly, they emerged onto the path, and Evelyn pulled up sharply, breathing hard. The run had warmed her, and she stripped off her cardigan without a second thought, half-wishing she'd taken Trevor up on his dare—at least then she'd have been nice and cool before starting their little impromptu hike.

"Okay," she said, trying to catch her breath as she slung the cardigan over her shoulder and looked around to make sure they were by themselves. "Not many people know about this place, and if we follow it for about half a mile it'll cut right behind my house. We need to hurry, though, because I don't think that guy was bluffing with the cops, and I don't want to take the chance that someone'll put two and two together and figure out our location."

Having ascertained that they were well and truly alone, she finally looked at Trevor, only to find that he was staring at her with an expression that she wasn't sure she liked. She widened her eyes and shook her head at him. "What?" she demanded.

In response, he dropped to his knees. "I fucking _love_ you, that's what!" Before she could process anything other than the fact that he was talking _entirely_ too loud for their escape attempt, he'd thrown his arms around her waist and buried his face in her stomach. "Marry me, bear my children, Evy, _please_ ," he said, voice muffled.

" _Trevor_ ," she said impatiently, nearly falling backwards at the collision and grabbing his shoulder to keep her balance.

He threw his head back to look up at her. "I'm _serious;_ with my God-given talent for melee and your strategic brain, our spawn would be fucking _unstoppable_."

"I will give the idea of carrying your children more than a passing thought, I promise. Now, let's _go!_ "

He shoved his face into her stomach one more time, inhaling sharply. " _Christ,_ you smell good," he groaned, and then he released her and bounded to his feet. "Lead the way!"

She tipped her head back to face the sky, taking a second's time-out to pray for patience, and then she bent and snatched up his boots from where he'd dropped them when they first stopped. "Put those on first," she said, throwing them at him.

"Oh, God, baby, keep ordering me around like that and I'll do whatever you want me to do," he groaned.

"In that case, put your damn pants on, too," she said, turning away so he wouldn't see the smile sneaking its way onto her face.

It didn't take him long to wrestle on his clothes—still longer than she would have preferred, but if it was between risking another minute and having to walk with a Trevor dressed in nothing but sodden underwear, she was perfectly willing to pick the former. The second he'd jerked his shirt over his head, she took off, following the path in the rough direction of her house.

He was behind her immediately, but judging by the sound of breaking branches, he was having a harder time than she was—not saying much; the path was overgrown in parts, especially _this_ part, and navigating it was difficult for both of them. "Evy, would you slow down for two seconds?"

The man was _whining._ Evelyn rolled her eyes so hard she nearly strained something, but she didn't check her stride. "Right now I'm trying to get us both back to my house safely and without being stopped by the police. _Slowing down_ doesn't really make my to-do list."

"You're not being very nice, you know." He sounded affronted, and she heaved a quick sigh.

"What do you want me to do?"

" _Well_ —" His voice had dropped about an octave, which was indicative enough of where that sentence was going that she didn't feel the need to wait around to see what exactly he planned to say.

"Nope! Stop right there. I do not want you to answer that question." She sighed, paused, turned around, and grabbed his hand. "Here, just… hold onto me and try to follow me as best you can. I'm not too bad at avoiding thorns and low-hanging branches."

He grumbled something inarticulate, but she thought that something about the jumbled syllables sounded a little bit pleased. She turned, and, tucking their clasped hands under her arm, started fighting the foliage again.

Of course, the fact that she was, in effect, borrowing his arm meant that he had to walk a lot more closely behind her. His boots were regularly scuffing up against the heels of hers, she could feel ripples of body heat from his chest hitting her back, could smell the chlorine on his skin, and his breath gusted against the back of her bare neck—she wished she'd taken down her braid, if only to have something blocking her skin back there.

She needed a distraction. Maybe if she stirred him up again, he wouldn't _want_ to be this close to her, because she got the distinct impression that he was enjoying this trek now _much_ more than she was—but she'd need to move carefully; she was starting to really understand just how volatile his temper was. Still. The only time he seemed to forget about propositioning her was when he was mad at her. She thought she could do something about that.

"You know," she said carefully as she ducked them beneath a particularly low, whiplike branch, "the Chumash police picked me up after the whole. Y'know. Robbery and hostage situation."

"Heh," he said. "They try to pin it on you?"

"They seemed like they were angling for that; how'd you know?"

"Ehh, cops get their feelings hurt when the robbers get away. They figure there _must_ have been someone in on it, it's the only way to explain why they failed so _phenomenally._ "

"Right. They eventually decided that I wasn't in on it, but, um, then they asked for descriptions."

She couldn't detect any stiffness of movement or voice when he asked, "What'd you tell 'em?" Rather than being reassured by his apparently relaxed tone of voice, she sensed that she was in unknown territory and immediately wished she'd never brought it up, but she couldn't very well lie to him _now._ She hadn't lied to him so far, except by omission, but his constant insistence that she _tell him the truth_ made her scared to find out what would happen if she did.

"You know, it wasn't like I'd gathered much. Your races, accents, and what you called each other—that was about it. Not really helpful."

"But?" he asked, still with that almost delicate tone, totally unlike his usual harsh bulldozer voice.

"But," she admitted shakily, "they were able to figure out that you were involved. They were the first ones to mention your name to me. Um. Your _full_ name."

The silence stretched out just long enough for her to worry that she'd made a fatal blunder, then he was laughing, and there was a distinctly unpleasant edge to it. She didn't realize that that edge wasn't meant for her until he said, "I bet they fucking _loved_ that! Trevor Philips, giving them the slip _again._ Ahh, Evy, I wish I'd thought to tell you my name just so you could give it to 'em right away, _really_ see them stew. Hah!"

She didn't ask whether he was mad at her or not, not wanting to remind him that he had any reason to be angry. Instead, her voice a little shaky from her former fear, she said, "You know they're looking all over for you, right? That you're wanted for… well, pretty much _everything_?"

"Listen, babe, the LSPD knows me by name, on sight. I've given up on the whole anonymity thing."

She mulled this over, then, unable to make any sense of it, she asked, "How the hell are you not in jail?"

Her baffled tone seemed to tickle him, because he was laughing again, louder this time, and she squeezed his hand hard and shushed him, glancing worriedly into the trees to see if she could make out any flashing lights. So far, they were clear, but they weren't going to stay that way with Trevor acting like a bull in a china shop.

"Ahhh," he said as he wound down again. "Luck. Smarts. Tendency to pick good safe houses—spin the fuckin' wheel. The most important thing is that Uncle T is free and here with you right now, don't you think?"

In response, she rolled her eyes and dropped his hand. "Hey," he protested immediately, reaching for her again.

"We have to go back into the trees again and I need both my hands," she said, slipping out of his grasp, and he grumbled again, but all in all seemed ready enough to get out of the woods. She pushed past the thin line of trees until she emerged directly into her back yard.

"Christ, you don't even have a back fence," he muttered as he came out of the trees beside her. She shot him a look and broke into a run. "Hey!" he barked, but now that they were out of the trees, she had no intention of waiting around to get caught—she wasn't going to stop until they were safely under her roof.

She led the way around to the unlocked front door, barely keeping ahead of him—for someone who did drugs and drank the way he did, he was remarkably fast. They exploded into the house at almost the exact same time, and Evelyn started laughing breathlessly, half-relieved that they'd made it without getting caught, half-hysterically amused at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

Trevor got the door closed behind them, deadbolted it, and turned to look at her. She was leaning against the wall in an attempt to catch her breath, though her laughter was defeating her best efforts, and she just had time to register that he was looking at her with an expression she'd never seen on his face but which kind of scared her before he took one long step, coming well into her space, got one arm on either side of her, and kissed her again.

The adrenaline and the blood were pumping hard and fast, and Evelyn suddenly found that she didn't care who he was, what he'd done, or what he _could_ do—at that moment in time, all she cared about was that he was the one who had run right beside her and he was the one who had her pinned to the wall and was kissing her like he could devour her that way, like he wanted nothing in the world _but_ her. She found that it wasn't hard at all to forget her qualms, at least for a minute, and return his attentions with equal fervor, gripping his shoulders to jerk him hard towards her and then, once he was flush against her the way she wanted, slipping her arms up around his neck and making it clear with her grip that she didn't want him going anywhere.

He seemed perfectly content where he was. Once it was apparent that she wasn't going to try to slip away, he loosened an arm and dragged his hand down the side of her skirt, slipping it beneath the hem and once again tracing a path up the back of her thigh, setting each and every nerve ending there buzzing. He didn't stop this time, though, continuing up until he was gripping her ass, fingers twisting and digging into the fabric of her underwear like he was seconds away from tearing it off.

The aggression was palpable; Evelyn felt it, and expressed it by reflexively scraping her nails against his bare scalp—not enough to leave marks, but definitely enough to evoke an animalistic growl from deep in his chest. It was a response that went straight to her knees, and they were about two seconds from just ending up on the hallway floor when—

"Trevor?"

The sound was weak, but in the quiet of the house, they couldn't exactly miss it. Trevor made another low, feral sound that, two seconds ago, would have sealed Evelyn's doom, but the reminder that they weren't alone served to bring her at least partially back to earth. She turned her head, breaking away from him, and then, with considerable difficulty given that he immediately turned his attentions to the hollow of her throat, she said hoarsely, "You should probably look in on that."

He put his mouth to her ear, and, breath gusting hotly across the sensitive skin there, he muttered, "On _what_?"

He sounded pissed off, which served to further anchor her, reminding her of who she was and what she was doing. She let go of his neck and drew her arms back, putting her hands up to signify that she was no longer engaged.

"Trevor!" Ron sounded just as weak but more insistent this time.

Evelyn, hunched back against the wall, made herself switch off before resolutely meeting Trevor's eyes. His arms around her loosened almost immediately, then the furrows of his face deepened as he scowled. He dropped his hands from her and turned abruptly on the heel of his boot.

"RON, YOU BETTER BE DEAD OR DYING, BECAUSE IF YOU'RE NOT I'M GOING TO RIP YOUR _FUCKING_ SPINE OUT AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS," he roared as he stomped down the hall.

Evelyn waited until he'd left the front hall before bolting to the kitchen. She immediately grabbed a beer out of the case growing warm on the counter, knocked the cap off, and downed half of it at once. She was aware that she was trembling, and she didn't know exactly why, but she was willing to bet it had something to do with her being both powerfully scared and powerfully angry—scared of Trevor, angry at herself.

 _What the fuck are you_ _ **doing**_ _?_ she screamed internally. _Have you lost your fucking mind, willingly making out with a murderous speed freak twenty years your senior who happens to be_ _ **holding you hostage**_?

She heard something crashing from the guest room where Ron was holed up, followed by Trevor's rough voice saying something she couldn't make out, and she prayed that Trevor wasn't killing him. She lifted the bottle to her lips with a shaking hand and took another long swig from it. This was crazy. This was quite literally crazy-person behavior, textbook Stockholm syndrome, and she'd always given herself more credit than that, yet here she was, ingratiating herself to her captor in hopes that he'd see some use in her that would convince him to spare her life. The fact that the instinct was apparently a subconscious one didn't matter; the only thing that mattered was that she was _acting_ on it.

_At least, that's the easy explanation of it. That's the explanation that keeps you from having to own up to the fact that you find anything about him attractive._

Evelyn scowled fiercely and finished the beer off. She did not want to think about this right now. She didn't want to think about _anything_ right now. She wanted to get obliterated and pass out for twelve hours, but that option was off the table with Trevor in the house—lowered inhibitions were not going to get her through this. Two beers in as many hours was hardly dangerous, but anything more… well.

She glanced at the floor, which was riddled with broken glass from Trevor's first three beers, and almost without thinking about it, she threw her own down as well. The sound of the bottle shattering suddenly threw something into sharp relief for her, and she closed her eyes as the realization washed over her.

Even while carefully avoiding thinking about the topic of attraction—or more specifically, any sort of attraction to _Trevor_ —Evelyn couldn't ignore the fact that having him around made her less careful. If the fact that she'd just done with her empty bottle what she'd initially berated him for doing with his wasn't evidence enough, the past three hours provided plenty more. She was saying exactly what she thought (even when what she thought put her in danger), she thought kissing him to shut him up was a good idea, she thought kissing him after a bit of an adrenaline rush was a good idea, she thought kissing him at _all_ was a good idea at _any_ point in time—these were instances of _terrible_ judgment that pointed to the fact that exposure to him was making Evelyn act like _Not_ -Evelyn.

The thought freaked her out.

She opened her eyes slowly, brows furrowed hard in almost-angry determination. _No more. Get control of yourself._ _ **No more**_ _._

Trevor, after delivering a very short and very angry lecture to Ron on the evils of cock-blocking and the resulting fate suffered by cock-blocks, administered another dose of morphine, too eager to knock Ron unconscious and continue his business with Evy to prolong the lecture the way he normally would.

He found Evy in the kitchen, and he instantly knew from the look on her face that his window had closed. "Oh, no, no, no," he said, taking a quick step towards her, a move which she countered by taking an equally quick step in the opposite direction.

"Um," she said, carefully not meeting his eyes. "I think it's past time for me to get some sleep."

" _Oh_ , no, you don't," he said, although he was getting the distinct feeling that this situation was slipping through his fingertips and he could do absolutely nothing about it. It was a feeling that Trevor Philips abhorred, and he put some steel into his voice as he advanced on her and added, "We were just getting _started_ , Evy. You don't get to back out now."

"Trevor— _please_ ," she said, and the strained tone of her voice was enough to make him stop in his tracks, albeit reluctantly. "It's been a very long… very _confusing_ day. I'd really like to go to sleep now."

Trevor looked at her, scowling in frustration, wondering if she might yield if he stared at her long enough. He didn't _want_ her to go to sleep, he wanted to fuck her senseless in a dozen different ways all over the house before the sun came up, then he wanted to sleep and drink and then fuck her twice over. This whole sexual tension thing wasn't really _him_ —in fact, the lack of satisfaction was starting to piss him off.

But realistically, what was he going to do? Someone in Trevor's line of work gradually got an instinct for how far you could push someone before they either snapped or locked the fuck down. Usually it didn't matter; usually pushing people to their limit benefited him. Not in this case. If Evelyn locked down, that was game, set, and match for old Uncle T. He didn't rape women; it was one of the only tatters of anything that could be considered "morality" that still clung to him. If she didn't want this to happen, it wasn't going to happen.

Yeah, he could try to convince her otherwise. Judging by the way she'd reacted in the hallway, her feelings about him weren't as cool as she pretended they were. But again, he had an instinct for people's limits, and the shuttered expression on Evy's face told him that enough had changed between then and now that pushing at her would not end well for him. At least, it wouldn't end the way he _wanted_ it to. Loath as he was to admit it, his best course of action was to give her a little breathing room.

For now.

He broke the silence, holding up his hands defensively. "All right," he graveled, none too pleased. "Fine. You wanna go to sleep, I can't make you stay up. Just make sure all you _do_ is sleep, you hear me?"

"Yes," she said, sounding relieved and edging towards the door as if he might suddenly change his mind and pounce on her, and it pissed him off. He glared at her.

"Yeah, I'll just… get blitzed. Jerk off. Break something."

"Good night," she all but whispered before slipping into the hallway. He listened to her footsteps retreat before he turned to the case of beer. Yeah, he'd drink his sorrows. He might break something. And he would definitely jerk off, and he'd have to be a better liar than he was to convince himself that the thought that would eventually push him over the edge wouldn't be of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, guys! Hopefully the slightly longer chapter made up for it. Trevor really needs to quit proposing to people he barely knows. Forgive me the tiny bit of sap at the very end there; I couldn't resist. Thanks to everyone who left kudos or commented, I thoroughly appreciate it! See you next time.


	6. Being Neighborly

Evelyn was positive she'd gone to bed alone. Yet when she woke up, it was to the distinct sensation of being nestled up against another person, with that other person's arm tightly around her, locked over her ribcage.

Evelyn wasn't one of those people who took a moment to remember the events of the night before; when she woke up, she usually picked up where she left off, so it didn't take her long to figure out who was in her bed. Even as she cursed herself for being an unforgivably heavy sleeper, she cracked an eye open and confirmed what she already knew: Trevor was asleep beside her. At least, she _assumed_ it was Trevor—he was lying on his stomach with his face pressed so hard into the pillow that she was astonished he could even _breathe_ —but the ratty stick-and-poke tattoos and early stubble growing in at the back of his head confirmed his identity well enough for her.

The fact that she could _see_ his tattoos worried her. It meant he'd lost his shirt at some point in the night, and if his shirt was off…

Carefully, trying not to dislodge his arm and wake him up, she reached for the edge of the blanket that covered them. Slowly, she lifted it up enough that she could peek beneath it.

_Yep, he's totally naked. Awesome._

"See anything you like?"

_Aaaaand he's awake and caught me looking at his ass. Even more awesome._

Evelyn dropped the blanket and glared at him—he'd turned slightly to look at her out of one eye, and he wasn't bothering to hide the shit-eating grin that was creeping across his face. " _Why_ are you in my bed?" she demanded.

"Well, _Ron's_ in the only other bed in the house. What, did you expect me to sleep on the _couch_? I'm not a couch kinda guy."

"Oh. So… you just decided to crawl into bed with me while I was _sleeping,_ then."

"Well, I'm not bunking with _Ron_." He lifted his head and looked at her with bleary but slightly accusing eyes. "I was hoping you'd wake up. You didn't."

"Yeah, no kidding," she muttered. "So why are you _naked?_ "

He groaned and put his head back down. "Comfortable that way."

She huffed and shifted to climb out from under the covers, but he tightened his grip across her ribs and groaned in protest, twisting around so he could curl up against her. "Nooooo. Too early. Go back to sleep."

" _Trevor_ ," she yelped.

"Relax," he said, his words slightly muffled seeing as he'd seen fit to press his face into her shoulder, "it's just morning wood. Natural."

"Trevor, I need to pee."

"Go ahead."

There was a brief pause before she realized that while he might have meant it, he still had no intention of releasing her. She huffed. "In the _bathroom,_ Trevor! Let me _go!_ "

He hummed in annoyance, sounding like a pissed-off, testosterone-fueled wasp, and finally loosened his grip, though she still had to slip out from under its heavy weight on her own. Once free, she scurried as quickly as she could into the bathroom and shut and locked the door behind her.

_Well. That was… something._

She wasn't too surprised she'd woken up to find him in bed with her; she'd have to be an idiot not to have halfway expected it, and her reigning championship as heaviest sleeper she knew ensured that she wouldn't wake up when he crawled in next to her. She checked her sleeping attire—gray gym shorts and a black tank—to see that they weren't unduly disheveled, but the move was more obligatory than anything else: after last night, she found that she was no longer concerned about sexual assault. Not from Trevor. It hadn't been her _intent_ to test him, but there was no denying that he'd been just as hot and bothered as she was (he was pressed right up against her; there were limits to which that sort of thing could be concealed and they'd been surpassed). The fact that he hadn't even touched her when she'd made it clear she didn't want him to made it pretty apparent that she didn't have much to fear from him in that corner.

That didn't mean that she intended to tempt fate, though. As far as she was concerned, she'd dodged a bullet. She resolved not to let the situation get that far out of control again, and with that, she set about getting her morning started.

By the time she'd finished her morning routine, she was starting to feel optimistic. She'd made it through one night already; if Trevor was to be believed they'd only be around for another night, maybe two more, at most. She could handle this.

When she exited the bathroom, she fully expected to find Trevor fast asleep again in her bed, but to her slight surprise he had vanished. She thought about calling out for him, then decided against it. She was sure she would find him eventually. _Just as long as he's not wandering around naked in my front yard._ The thought brought a frown to her face, and she had to suppress the instinct to go see if she needed to drag him inside.

Instead, she went out to the living room. A quick at the clock confirmed that it was noon, which explained both why she felt so rested and why she was so _hungry_ —she hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours, and the excitement of the night before had kept her from noticing at the time, but adrenaline could only stave off appetite for so long. Of course, she'd need to assess the damage to the house and clean up the kitchen before she could start doing something about that.

Interestingly enough, he hadn't managed to tear the place up too bad in the single night he'd been loose on it. There were empty beer bottles all over the living room, more broken glass on the kitchen floor, and for some reason, the TV was crooked, but overall things looked pretty normal. _He must have gotten too tired to cause trouble._

Evelyn set about sweeping the broken glass on the kitchen floor into one uniform pile. When she looked up to try to locate a dustpan, Trevor was standing in the doorway.

"Jeez," she said, starting. "Don't sneak up like that."

A slow smile grew on his face. "Why?" he asked deliberately. "Did I scare you?"

"No, I just jumped out of my skin because I _felt_ like it," she replied sarcastically—mostly to shield the fact that she felt distinctly uncomfortable with his state of undress. He wasn't naked anymore— _thank God_ —but he _was_ only wearing his jeans, foregoing his shirt… probably just to fuck with her, but to ask him bluntly about it would throw a spotlight on the fact that she was paying attention. It was a shame she'd rather die than make it obvious that she'd noticed, because she _really_ wanted to ask him about the long, ugly-looking scar stretching halfway across his ribcage, the most vivid of many.

Instead she turned to the refrigerator. "Want breakfast?" she asked simply.

"You offering?" he asked, coming further into the room

"I've got standard breakfast food. Scrambled eggs and bacon, that okay with you?"

"Hey, I'll eat anything," he said amiably, seating himself on the corner of the counter near the stove and scratching at his chest. She nodded and busied herself with pulling the food out of the fridge.

She was too conscious that he was watching her every move to keep working in silence, though. As she pulled out a mixing bowl, she asked casually, "How's Ron?"

"Just gave him another shot of morphine, so I think he's _pret_ -ty good." Trevor reached into the cardboard case on the counter that Evelyn had thought was empty and pulled out one last bottle of beer. He bit the cap off, held it away from him as it foamed up and dripped on the floor (Evelyn didn't even bother to comment), then took a drink, not seeming to care that it was warm.

"Isn't that much morphine bad for him if his body's trying to heal?" she asked, cracking eggs briskly into the bowl. When Trevor didn't answer, she turned her head to find that he was staring at her with an expression like he'd just smelled something bad. "What?" she demanded.

"You're a fucking _morning person,_ aren't you?" he asked, making it sound like an accusation.

"It's twelve-fifteen PM," she said, trying not to sound like she was laughing at him.

He stared disbelievingly at her for a second before saying, voice raised, "I don't give a _fuck_ what time it is—when you fucking _just_ woke up, it's fucking _morning,_ all right?"

"If your question is 'am I cheerful after waking up,' then yeah, I guess I am. Compared to _you_ , anyway, but I feel like that's… not difficult."

"No kidding. Christ, you're practically _glowing._ It's unnatural," he said, taking another swig of beer.

She laughed, splashed some milk and shook some salt and pepper in with the eggs, and started whisking it all up. "Just keep drinking; I'm sure you'll feel better soon."

"Damn straight," he mumbled before draining the beer and throwing it on the floor. She noticed that he seemed to be aiming for the pile of glass she'd swept up, though she couldn't say whether it was because he was trying to be considerate or because it posed too tempting a target to ignore. She'd bet on the latter. He jumped off of the counter and shuffled across the kitchen, passing behind her to pull the next case out of the fridge.

She decided to leave him alone, figuring he'd probably need a few minutes and some food before he was ready to talk. She just got two separate pans ready on the stove, starting the bacon in one and then putting the eggs in another. As she flipped the bacon, she became conscious that he was peering over her shoulder, and she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Can I help you with something?"

"What else can you cook?" he asked, stepping a little closer—she could feel his chest brush against her back and froze up. _Careful, Evelyn—careful._

"Ummm," she said, struggling to find her train of thought and not think about the fact that her tank top was the only thing separating her skin from his. "Lots—lots of things. I try new things most nights and, um, weekends."

He lifted his beer and took a drink before reaching past her to rest it on the counter, still holding onto it so that his arm made a barricade to her left. "What's the fanciest thing you've ever cooked?" His voice was very close; he was practically speaking in her ear.

She kept her hands busy, stirring the eggs so they cooked without burning as she struggled to think. "I mean… does chicken cordon bleu count as fancy? I'm not…" She broke off when she felt his fingers brush at her hair on the right side, pulling a long strand behind her ear. _Don't engage._ She strengthened her voice, kept her eyes fixed on the stovetop, and said, "What's the story behind the scar on your stomach?"

Hell, if he was going to push her into uncomfortable territory, then at least she could steer it in a direction where she might learn something.

His fingers stilled beside her head, and then his arm was sliding away and he'd given her a foot or two of room. _A good thing, too,_ she thought as she reached forward and cut the stove off. _I couldn't have pretended to be 'cooking' for much longer without burning the stuff._

"You were looking?" he asked as she got plates out from the cabinet and scooped large portions on each one.

"Hey, you're flaunting it."

He gave her one of those growls, a little too rough to be called strictly flirtatious. "You _positive_ you wanna talk about _flaunting_ it while you're wearing those shorts, sweetheart?"

She turned around, gave him a quick scowl, and shoved a plate into his stomach. "Food." She took her own plate to the table, and he followed her, kicking out the chair to her immediate right instead of sitting across from her. "You didn't answer my question," she said, looking pointedly at him as she pulled her legs up Indian-style into the chair.

"Yeah, and I'm not fucking _going_ to, either," he said, shoveling a bunch of eggs into his mouth and continuing with his mouth full. "Man has a right to _some_ secrets. Ask something else."

She raised her eyebrows. This was the first time Trevor had flat-out _refused_ to answer a direct question, which pointed to the story behind that scar being _very_ interesting, but she wasn't going to push him. "Oh… kay," she said, taking a bite of bacon and looking over the rest of him. The bird on the side of his neck jumped out most immediately to her, given that it was personally relevant, but she refrained from asking about it, suspecting that he'd sense something with his animal instinct and turn it back around on her.

Instead, she waved her bacon at the most obvious mark on his half-naked frame, a huge cross taking up the majority of his left bicep, scrollwork wrapped around it which read "RIP Michael." Trevor didn't strike her as the sort of person to get strongly attached to people, though he _did_ seem the sort to get tattoos on impulse, so she figured there might be an interesting tale to go with that one. "What's that one about? Who's Michael?"

Trevor brought his fist—which was clenched tightly around a fork—down hard on the table. Head lowered, he looked at her more-than-a-little-menacingly out of the corners of his eyes, and she widened her eyes and shook her head. "Never mind, holy shit. I'm not trying to start a fight." _Maybe he_ _ **does**_ _get strongly attached to people after all._ The thought inspired a slight queasy feeling in her stomach.

Trevor sighed heavily and took a long pull from the beer he'd brought to the table. "No, it's not you," he growled after swallowing. "It's _Michael._ " It was clear from his tone that he did not hold a high opinion of Michael.

"Oh." She ate for a moment in silence before working up the bravery to ask, "If you hate him so much, why do you have a rest in peace tattoo for him?"

"The tattoo came _before_ I hated him," Trevor said irritably. "Fucker faked his own death to get away from me."

She frowned. "That shit only happens in movies."

"Yeah, I fuckin' thought so, too," he said moodily, scooping more food onto his fork. She watched him eat for a second before deciding that he was annoyed, but not dangerously pissed off, so she could probably afford one more touchy question.

"If he's alive and if you hate him, why don't you get the tattoo removed?"

He brought both fists down to the table this time, making the dishes clatter, and he glared at her. "Jesus Christ, I don't know! I haven't gotten around to it, okay? Are you usually this fucking chatty first thing in the morning?"

"Well, no, usually I'm _alone_ first thing in the morning," she said, and it was only once the words were out that she realized how pathetic they sounded. She immediately fixed her eyes on her plate so she didn't have to see what expression he was wearing and pushed her eggs around with her fork as she said, "Not that that's a _problem,_ I mean, I _prefer_ being alone." It sounded weak, even though she really meant it, and she suddenly didn't want to stay sitting at the table anymore and risk being exposed to either his mockery or his misplaced pity. Her food was mostly finished, so she quickly slid back her chair and stood, picking up her plate. "You want any more?"

"Nah. I've got enough." His voice sounded strangely subdued for him, which she took as more evidence that she shouldn't look at him. She turned on the spot and went to the kitchen to wash up.

The time it took her to wash her plate, both pans, and the mixing bowl was sufficient for her to relax a little bit. She couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed—there was no way for an impartial listener to take what she'd said as anything other than an expression of loneliness, let alone _Trevor_ , who had already expressed the opinion that she was hiding from people, but she'd said and done worse things in the time she'd spent with him so far and had gotten past _those_ just fine.

Once everything was in the drying rack, she went back to the table, only to find that he'd abandoned his practically scraped-clean plate and had wandered into her living room, was staring at one of the several big bookshelves lining the wall. She cautiously went into the room and took a seat on the couch furthest from where he stood, not wanting to get too close but also not wanting to leave him alone with her books. She sensed that he was the sort that tipped bookshelves for fun. Then set fire to them.

He reached up and took a book off the shelf, opened it, twisted it upside-down, and stared at it. Evelyn was about to say something sarcastic when she saw that it was her book on M.C. Escher, and she bit her tongue just in time.

"So," he said, eyes fixed on the page, "you're interested in my tattoos. Why?"

"First time I can really see them clearly, that's all," she said, relaxing as she realized he wasn't going to pursue the subject they'd left off on at the table.

"Usually people ain't interested in tats unless they've got some. Critical, I can see, but genuinely _interested_? Not likely." His eyes slid sideways to her. "Where's yours?"

"I don't think so."

"Oh, come on," he complained, clapping the book shut and grabbing his beer from where he'd set it on the shelf. "I showed you _mine._ "

"I didn't _ask_ to see yours."

He studied her speculatively. "But you _do_ have at least one. Interesting."

"Why is that interesting?"

He shrugged, starting across the room to where she was sitting on the couch. "No, it's just… further evidence that you're not as fuckin' straight-laced as you pretend to be, is all." Before she could argue, he thumped down on the couch beside her and changed the subject. "So, Evy, tell me. What does a typical Saturday look like for you?"

She chose to ignore that his arm had slid across the back of the couch behind her shoulders again, and instead she carefully thought about the question. "I usually wake up hungover."

"Yeah, well, I'd fuckin' hope so," he snorted as he took a swig of beer.

"Find something to eat. Drink a pot of coffee. Then I usually come in here and… I read for a while."

"You _read_." She turned her head slightly to see him watching her with a peculiar expression, like he wasn't sure whether to be disgusted or impressed.

"Well, yeah," she said, smiling vaguely as she inclined her head meaningfully towards the bookshelves lining the wall. "You've been on my ass about it since we met. Or did you think the books were just for show?"

"No, no, I just… what do you read?"

"Ahh… anything I'm interested in, really. The day we met, it was psychology. Lately, I've been looking into pop artists—but not Andy Warhol. Fuck Warhol."

"Why?"

"Because he was soulless prick who used other people for what he could get from them then tossed them aside like fucking kleenex."

"No, I mean—why do you spend your time off reading? Why do you carry fucking _books_ around in your purse? You live in Los Santos, for Christ's sake—or Los Santos _County,_ anyway, same fuckin' thing."

"So?"

" _So_ , you're not anything like the other vapid half-staved sun-addled girls who live here."

Evelyn pulled her legs up on the couch beneath her, turned so that she was facing Trevor instead of just sitting beside him, reached up, and grabbed the wrist that was lying along the back of the couch. "Trevor," she said, meeting his eyes as he glanced over at her, slightly surprised, "I'm _really_ going to need you to quit… talking about other people like we're in _competition_ with them or something. There are seven billion people in this world. Some of them are like you, some of them are like me, some of them are… not. And it rubs me the wrong way, being compared to other women like _they're_ doing something wrong because they like the fucking beach."

"What, you want me to rub you the _right_ way?" he asked, predictably latching onto the one thing she'd said that he could turn into an innuendo, curling his arm around her back and sliding closer.

She very pointedly ducked out from under his arm, took it in both her hands, and placed it in his lap. He sighed heavily, knocked back some more beer, and said, "I can't get a fucking bead on you, Evy, you know?"

"It's not like I'm _trying_ to be evasive, you just keep saying things that lead the conversation elsewhere."

"For instance," he said pointedly, looking at her like she should probably shut up right now, "you hole yourself away and _read_ on weekends—but you _really_ like people, don't you?"

Evelyn hesitated. When she met his eyes and saw that he was dead serious, she sighed and stroked her temple as she yielded. "I'm not much for one-on-one time; I don't feel like I have a lot in common with most of the people I meet—call it a cultural difference, someone from the deep south not really meshing with your typical San Andrean, whatever. But, if only instinctively, I _do_ have a general sense of goodwill towards the human race—something I feel like you're lacking, by the way."

"Hey, _fuck_ the human race. All right?" he said, pointing emphatically at her with his beer bottle. "Bunch of lying, whiny, lazy, weak _asswipes_ , and I'll tell you right now, they don't deserve _you_ standing up for 'em."

"Fuck the human race," she repeated faintly, testing the words, then immediately: "Is that why you do what you do?"

" _What_?"

She spoke very carefully then, aware that she was on shaky ground: "The Chumash police—when I talked to them, they rattled off a whole rap sheet that you're wanted for. And honestly, after spending a day or two with you, none of it—arson, stealing, murder—none of it sounds like something I couldn't… picture you doing. I'm just wondering if… the way you feel about other people has kind of. You know. Inspired you."

He stared at her for a minute, long enough that she was convinced she really _had_ fucked up, then he grunted, finished off the beer, and said, "Sure helps that I don't feel _guilty_ about any of it." He shot her a sideways glance. "That bother you?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Does _what_ bother me? That you don't feel guilt about hurting people?"

"…yeah." Oddly enough, despite the unrepentant declaration of roughly two seconds ago, Trevor seemed almost apprehensive, like what she thought made any kind of difference. It was that edge of almost-nervousness that made her stop and genuinely think about the question rather than following her instinct to immediately dodge it.

"Well," she said after a moment, stopped, glanced quickly at him to see that he was staring, clearly waiting for an answer, and said, "Trevor, I don't know. I haven't exactly had time to think about it. From a humanist perspective, yeah, it's not great that you go around killing people."

"But?" he prompted, clearly seeing that there was more to it.

She shot him an impatient look and yielded. "From the perspective of someone who's… very interested in the irregular… you're a gold mine."

" _Irregular_?" He sounded like he wasn't quite sure whether to be insulted or flattered.

"You're not like anyone else _I_ know."

He took this in, nodding distantly as he pursed his lips slightly, trying to work it all out. "So—you're saying it's okay if I kill people as long as I make it interesting."

" _No_."

"Well, then, what the fuck are you saying?"

She turned frustrated eyes to him. "What do you _want_ me to say? It feels like you're asking for either absolution or approval, and I can't give either."

He pulled a disgusted face. "I don't give a _fuck_ about _absolution_ —"

"Yeah, no shit! Hence the confusion!"

"I want to know how _you_ _personally_ feel about my _job._ Not some _humanist perspective_ bullshit. _You_."

" _Why_?"

"You ask me another fucking question and I'm going to set your fuckin' books on fire. Fucking _answer_ me."

She felt her pulse speed up as she met his flat yellow-brown eyes again. She'd run out of stalling tactics and they both knew it. For some reason, the topic had gotten him agitated, and her instinct was to try to soothe him, but she also knew that lies would not be well-received—and she was all but certain he'd be able to tell if she _didn't_ tell the truth. She exhaled slowly, then, keeping her eyes on his, she spoke.

"I, _personally,_ think that your _job_ —the way you do it, anyway—isn't about providing for your physical needs so much as it is about… maybe chasing the adrenaline rush, but more likely it's about the power. You have it. Your victims don't. And while on the one hand I, _personally_ , sympathize with your victims, who are just trying to make it through life, I also _personally_ understand the drive to seize power." She paused, but when he just continued to stare at her, she added, "Maybe that's why even though I definitely can't _condone_ what you do, I don't feel right condemning it, either. I mean, I know firsthand—you spend enough time feeling powerless, you anything you can to find your strength. Even if that means there's collateral damage."

He narrowed his eyes at her then—not angrily; more like he thought he had something figured out but wasn't sure. It was a look that inspired one to hastily review their secrets to make sure they were _still_ secrets, and Evelyn felt heat rising to her cheeks as she became uncomfortably aware that her answer had ventured a little too close to the part of her mind she was firmly keeping off-limits, from herself and _especially_ from him, and she only hoped he hadn't figured it out yet.

Otherwise, she might just as well tell him right then. _You have freedom, you have power, and both of those things are very attractive to me._ _ **You**_ _are very attractive to me, despite the fact that you're holding me hostage, despite every scar or bad habit you've got that says I shouldn't be, despite everything in me that says I should be repulsed by you._ It was the first time she'd admitted it to herself, even just in thought, and she felt the urge to bury her face in the couch cushions and _hide,_ but she couldn't do that without _really_ letting on to the fact that something was up with her, so she forced herself to maintain eye contact and act like her face _wasn't_ steadily turning pink.

Finally, _finally,_ Trevor grunted and looked away, across the room to the French doors looking out over the backyard and the treeline beyond. "Knew it."

"You knew what?" she asked, too relieved that he wasn't staring her down anymore to refrain from taking the bait.

"I knew I fuckin' saw something in you, that's what," he barked, but she was starting to learn how to tell the difference between his angry tones, and this one seemed more annoyed-that-her-brain-wasn't-on-the-same-track-as-his-and-she-had-to-ask-questions than about-to-go-into-an-irrational-rage. He went on before she could decide whether it was a good idea to try to get him to answer anything else: "Y'know, you hide it under the pretty talk, and the studying, and that _bullshit_ sense of propriety, but I fuckin' _see_ you, Evy. You're dissatisfied."

"Bullshit," she said reflexively. She wanted to get off the couch, across the room, away from him, but she knew that to do so would be as good as admitting defeat, so she stayed put, though she made sure there were a good six inches of space between them on the couch, hugging her knees so hard to her chest that it hurt.

"Yeah, _bullshit,_ 'bullshit,'" he snapped. "All this shit about being _happy_ alone, and reading your fucking books? What is it, you read because you want the real thing but don't know how to get it?"

She glared at him. "What _exactly_ is 'the real thing,' Trevor?"

"How about a fucking _life_?"

At that point, she didn't care if it was admitting defeat or not. She needed to get away from him. She lurched up from the couch, but Trevor seemed to have been waiting for it—he lashed out and got her by the wrist before she even made it two steps, spinning her around and grasping her other wrist before she could wind back and slap him like she _really_ wanted to, caution be damned.

"Ohhh, did I strike a nerve, there, gorgeous?" he rumbled.

"Let me _go,_ Trevor," she hissed, pulling at her arms, but his grip only tightened.

"No, you know, it actually makes a lot of sense. You know, you had me running circles last night, wondering what the fuck you were doing even _touching_ a sorry old rat bastard like me, let alone shoving your fucking tongue down my throat. It makes a lot more sense now. Huh?" he growled, giving her a hard shake. "You don't want _me._ You want my _life_ , don't you?"

Evelyn was backed into a corner, and as was becoming habit, she came out swinging. She narrowed her eyes at him, realized that anything she said probably wasn't going to sound too impressive with her hunched over in front of him trying to get away, so she stopped trying to get away. Instead, she promptly climbed right into his lap, one knee on either side, which had the strategic effect of throwing him off long enough for her to duck down, get in his face, and address the myriad accusations he'd flung at her.

"You want to have this conversation right now? _Fine._ Sure. I envy the fact that you can do whatever the fuck you want, apparently without consequences. I'm so engaged in trying to figure out what you're going to do next that half the time, I don't even remember that you've effectively taken me hostage—for the _second_ time, by the way—and _fuck_ having enough time or brain power to try to figure out if I can get out of this in one piece, or at _all_. As far as why I kissed you, and then kissed you _back_ —as far as trying to figure out _why_ or in what _way_ I'm attracted to you, join the club and spin the _fucking_ wheel. And do me a favor, all right? Once you figure it out, will you tell _me_? Cause I have _no_ fucking clue what's going on with me! And _do you actually have a fucking erection right now?_ "

He glared defensively at her. "Oh, _what_? Do you want me to listen to you or concentrate on not popping a boner?"

Evelyn released a frustrated groan through clenched teeth. "If you don't kill me, then I'm pretty sure I'm going to fucking kill _you_ ," she swore, and out of sheer frustration, a complete lack of any other ideas, and because for some reason she really _wanted_ to, she leaned forward and kissed him again.

He met her halfway. Finding that he'd released her wrists, she ran her hands along his bare shoulders, tracing his rough skin up his throat to cup his face hard, as if he might pull back if she didn't maintain a grip on him. He made use of his newly freed up hands as well, moving them up her sides and palming her breasts through the thin fabric of her tank top.

She exhaled hard through her nose at the contact and ground into him, pulling one of those knee-weakening growls from him that only made her shift her hips and do it again. Despite her grip on his face, he pulled back then, and she opened her eyes to look at him, one hand slipping from his jaw to press commandingly against his back. "You're fucking crazy and I love you," he groaned, dropping his forehead to her shoulder as she rocked against him again.

She cracked a smirk at that. "Buddy, if _either_ of us is crazy, I'm pretty sure it's not—" Before she could get the quip out, he bit her collarbone, hard enough to make her gasp, and in immediate retaliation she dug her nails into his back and raked them down, hard enough that she felt skin gathering beneath her nails as they traced downward.

He threw his head back and roared, "Oh, _God_ , that's good!" She laughed, low and delighted, cutting herself off with a yelp as he got both hands on her waist and twisted around to throw her backwards on the couch, landing on her hard enough to wind her slightly. He dragged a rough palm up her thigh, passing underneath the loose hem of her shorts and digging ragged fingernails into the sensitive skin there before pulling her leg up beside his waist and then fitting himself against her, leaning down to kiss her roughly again. She obligingly hooked her knee around his back, eliminating the fraction of remaining space between them and giving as good as she got.

There was a knock at the door.

Trevor seemed not to notice, slipping his hand into her tank top and rubbing a stiffening nipple with the pad of his thumb, and even as she arched into the touch she was fighting through the haze, realizing that things might be about to get bad and she needed to _deal with it_. With considerable difficulty, she broke from the kiss, and Trevor growled, "Oh, what the _fuck_ " into her neck, bucking once between her legs, ostensibly to reorient her focus on what he thought mattered most at the moment.

If Evelyn had been anyone but who she was, it might have worked. As it was, she loosened her leg from around his waist and brought her hands up to grab at his wrists, pushing his hands away from her. "Trevor—" she whispered.

The doorbell rang.

"—someone's at the door," she finished.

He made that low, frustrated growling sound again, refusing to yield as she struggled to get out from under him. "It's a fucking salesman," he snarled into her throat. "He'll go away."

" _Or_ it's a fucking _neighbor_ wanting to know why they've been hearing shouting and glass breaking for the last twelve hours," she said, working one leg and half of her torso out from beneath his weight.

"Or it's the fucking _police_ and they'll have a warrant to serve you," he argued, seeming to grow heavier as he sensed he was about to lose her.

"If it was the police, they'd have clocked your truck and be busting in here already on the grounds of probable cause, Trevor; let me _handle_ it!"

" _Fuck_!" he barked loudly, nearly taking out her eardrum, but his body relaxed and she was suddenly able to wriggle out from under him and fall to the floor. She was on her feet in a second, quickly running one hand over her clothing to try to straighten it out, the other hand shooting to her hair, which she could tell Trevor had made a hot mess of somewhere along the line. There was no way she was going to be able to smooth it down to an acceptable extent; she'd just have to hope whoever was at the door would attribute it to a hangover.

She shot a quick, harried look at Trevor, but he was planted facedown in the couch, sulking. _Good_ , she thought; _at least maybe like that he'll stay out of the way_. Quickly, she crossed the room in her bare feet, heading to the little entryway and unlocking the door before opening it slowly and warily.

Despite what she'd told Trevor, she hadn't been _entirely_ certain that the police weren't at her door, so when she saw that her visitor was only her next-door neighbor, she felt her shoulders relax in relief.

Sean had lived next door to her for about six months—or rather, since the road ended directly in front of her house, he was one house down, on the right. He was about thirty, an engineer working at Fort Zancudo just south, and Evelyn suspected he was lonely, since it was fairly common of him to drop by for chitchat every week or so. Evelyn didn't find him particularly interesting, but since he'd never made her feel uncomfortable, she was polite and usually spared a few minutes for him whenever he came over.

It was going to be hard to be patient with him this time, though. She made herself give him a smile, though she didn't think she could be blamed if it was slightly strained. "Sean. What's up?" she asked casually, holding the door open only enough so that she could stand between it and the frame, blocking his line of sight into the house.

"Hey, good morning," he said, giving her a worried smile in return. "Um… this might be weird, but I was out in my yard and I thought I heard… yelling coming from your house."

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

He studied her. "Yeah, it sounded like a guy and a girl having a shouting match. It didn't come from here?"

"I mean, I've had the TV going while I do stuff around the house."

He looked carefully at her. "You look like you had quite a night," he ventured.

She tried not to let the smile freeze on her face, lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Friday only comes once a week, right?"

He chuckled, and then, eagerly, he said, "Oh, did I tell you I might get promoted?"

"Umm," she said, trying to discreetly smooth her hair down a little more in the back. "You might have mentioned it?"

"Yeah. My supervisor told me he's, and I quote, 'really impressed by the work ethic' I've been showing over the past few months."

Evelyn tried not to tune out, but it was hard—Sean was detailing the benefits that would come with the more advanced position, and she had utterly _no_ interest in paying attention, especially not with the situation inside the house. She was about to interrupt him when she heard a loud, angry groan from somewhere behind her.

There was no way Sean hadn't heard it. He cut himself off, frowning as he listened, and Evelyn froze up completely. She heard footsteps behind her, then her neighbor was looking at her and asking "What was that?", and she knew shit was about to go down and there was nothing she could do about it.

Then the door was wrenched out of her grip and flung wide open, and she felt warmth on her bare arm, casting a harried glance over her shoulder to confirm that Trevor was standing half-behind, half-beside her, glaring openly at Sean. "The fuck do you want?" he snapped.

Sean gaped for a second before realizing that the look on Trevor's face hardly boded well for him and making a half-assed effort at speaking up. "I—I'm just… I'm sorry, are you—?"

"I'm her boyfriend."

Evelyn's eyes widened a fraction and, reflexively (and partially out of spite), she said, " _Ex._ " Trevor gave her a quick, wounded glance that she willfully ignored: although the initial effort had been to cover her ass and explain why her neighbors had never seen him before, she realized too in hindsight that "ex-boyfriend" would much better explain their antagonistic dynamic than "current boyfriend." After all, there was no way her expression held any kind of warmth for him, especially after this interruption.

"You didn't answer my question," Trevor said, switching his gaze from Evelyn to Sean and glowering threateningly at him. "What the fuck do you _want_? We were _busy._ "

Evelyn turned her head to glare at him, then something caught her eye and she glanced down. She wished she hadn't. Trevor's erection was clearly outlined against his jeans, and her eyes immediately shot to the ceiling as she half-averted her gaze and half-prayed that Sean wouldn't notice. She risked a cautious look at her neighbor and found that her prayers had gone unanswered. He'd noticed, and although he immediately looked away, Trevor—naturally—picked up on it.

He took one step forward, just shy of entering Sean's space, and Evelyn put her hand on his forearm immediately, though she doubted she could do much to stop him if he decided to skin Sean alive, steal his kidneys, something like that. "What are you staring at, cupcake? Hmm?"

"Leave it alone," Evelyn muttered lowly to him.

"Nah," he said, eyes still fixed on Sean, who was taking a quick step back. "I think your buddy here came to get fucked. Least I can do is oblige him, right? I mean, he _was_ staring at my boy."

"I'm sorry," blurted Sean, hands up defensively. "I didn't mean to—interrupt anything, or anything, I just…"

"Well you _fucking_ did!" Trevor barked, and Evelyn tightened her grip on his arm so much that her knuckles turned white, but he didn't seem to take the least bit of notice. "So you need to either _fuck off_ or get in here and get busy, cause I'm not exactly going to suck _myself_ off!"

"I'm sorry," Sean stammered one more time before turning and fleeing as fast as he could.

Trevor grunted. "Thought he'd never go," he said, and slammed the door. Immediately, he turned and reached for Evelyn, but she'd dropped his arm and rapidly stepped back, just past arm's length, folded her arms, and _glared_.

"What the _fuck_ was that?" she snapped.

He stared at her, the creases on his forehead deepening as he realized she wasn't quite as ready to pick up where they left off as he was. "The fuck do you mean?"

"Do you have a death wish? You know what, don't answer that," she said, waving her hand vehemently as he opened his mouth to respond. "Maybe tell me instead _why_ you felt the need to harass and antagonize my _neighbor_ —who can now ID you, by the way!"

Trevor grimaced dismissively. "That wuss? I _really_ don't think so."

"You know what, Trevor, could you do me a favor? Could you stop acting like a _complete fucking monster_ for five minutes? Seriously, what was Sean's crime? Aside from bad timing, that is."

Trevor stared at her in utter disbelief. "You're standing up for _that guy_? You gotta be kidding me."

"Yeah, well, I'm not kidding. The guy's my neighbor and he doesn't deserve your shit; he's never been anything but nice."

Trevor snorted, making a jerking-off motion as he said, "Oh, yeah, I _bet_ he's nice. Come on, Evelyn, even _you're_ not naïve enough to think he's got any motive in dropping by whenever he can find a fucking excuse other than the fact that he wants to fuck your brains out. But you won't let him, will you? And I bet he fucking _hates_ you for it."

Evelyn briefly wished looks could kill; if she could just glare him into the ground then it would solve _so_ many problems for her. " _Stop talking,_ Trevor."

Trevor took a step towards her and extended his arm, pointing vehemently at the door. "If you think for one second that he's not jacking it into a sock right now, moaning about how girls always pass over the _nice guys_ for the bad boys, then you're a fucking _idiot_."

Evelyn wanted to just lunge forward and belt him across the jaw, but she wasn't quite angry enough to forget the circumstances that led to Trevor being here in the first place, so she just kept her arms crossed so tightly over her stomach that she felt like she was going to crush something. "Fine," she said, her lips barely moving.

Trevor paused, slightly thrown. "Fine?" he repeated after a moment. "Fine, _what_?"

"Fine, you win, whatever," she said.

"What the fuck does that mean?"

She sighed angrily. "It means I'm tired of talking."

"Me, too." He reached out for her again, but she dodged him, hands up as she backed towards the living room. His brows rushed down angrily, but before he could protest, she was speaking:

"Just… could you give me, like, five minutes not sharing the same space as you? _Please?_ I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind."

"What the fuck does _that_ mean?" he snapped again. She could see the veins starting to stand out on his neck, the side of his head, even his forearms as he clenched his fists, but she was too sick of all of it to be properly afraid. Instead of answering, she just shook her head, turned away and went to her room.

She half expected him to follow, and wasn't sure what she'd do if he did. He didn't, though—instead, there was a brief period of silence before she heard him roar, " _FUCK YOU, THEN!_ ", followed by a loud crash. She didn't investigate. She just quietly closed her door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Fucking_ Sean. Whole world's full of cockblocks, I tell you, haha. And I can honestly say that writing the little bit of dialogue between him and Evelyn before Trevor pops up was the most bored I've been throughout this entire freaking fic, ugh.
> 
> Trevor is a cuddly sleeper and no one can convince me otherwise. This was a monster chapter, to the point where I was thinking about trying to break it in half, but there was no logical breaking point and I really liked the flow of the whole thing and the content/conversations/kissy stuff in general, so there you go. Oh, and on the topic of... narrative structure or whatever, here's a heads-up that this part of the series is going to be over very quickly after this, but don't worry, after the last chapter is posted I plan to have the next installment up within about a week. I may have said it before, but the series is probably going to span six or seven total stories, at least, varying in length from like one chapter to... I don't know, ten, something like that, and I intend to keep writing at the same pace, so that's what's happening there.
> 
> Thanks for the kudos and comments, guys. You're the absolute best.


	7. Endgame

Surprisingly enough, there wasn't much more noise following the initial huge crash. A few more thumps, and then everything got quiet.

Which put Evelyn on fucking edge.

She was sitting on the floor with her back to the door, leaning back against her bed. She wanted a cigarette, but she _didn't_ want to leave her bedroom to go get them out of the kitchen. She'd had some time to calm down and realize that what she'd just done was _bad._

She couldn't _believe_ she'd kissed him again. She wanted to blame it on him, to tell herself that it was his fault for forcing her to admit her attraction to him, that once she'd acknowledged it then she could no longer ignore it— _wanted_ to, but she knew it wasn't entirely true. _She'd_ kissed _him,_ and she'd done it because having the evidence of _his_ attraction right there between her legs pushed her over the edge. That little encounter on the couch ripped a big fucking hole in the lie she'd told herself the night before: that she could control herself, that she could maintain the uneasy tension without letting it spiral out of control, that Trevor would be out of her life for good soon.

The couch made it very clear that at the bottom of all the bullshit, they were just _itching_ for each other, and that terrified Evelyn. She had always thought she was a person who knew herself very well, knew what she wanted, and books and rules and solitude and rationality and _order_ were the things she wanted.

She'd thought. Then Trevor fucking Philips had come striding into her life with that cocksure bowlegged walk of his, the manifested opposite of _all_ of those things that Evelyn loved, and for some reason, unlike anyone she'd ever _known_ , he'd awoken a heat in her she'd never felt before.

She'd known that he was dangerous from the second he'd crashed into the bank that day, barking out orders in threats in that gravelly loud voice of his. She'd known he was dangerous, and she'd practically made an art form out of talking her way out of bodily harm ever since he'd showed up, but what she _didn't_ expect was for her own body to prove dangerous as well. She felt betrayed by herself, shaken-up. She didn't trust herself around him anymore, not after she'd fucked up _so_ spectacularly after _specifically resolving_ not to.

She pushed down the uneasy feeling that came with acknowledging that she could no longer trust herself and turned her attention to the more immediate problem: Trevor was fucking pissed at her, and she had absolutely no idea how she was going to handle this latest tantrum. Really, the only solution for calming him down that readily presented itself was going back out there and finishing what they'd started the way he'd obviously wanted to, and that was _not_ an option she was willing to consider now that she was away from him and her head had cleared. Despite what her instincts and body were screaming for, fucking the homicidal crank dealer who probably was carrying any _number_ of STDs was a _terrible_ idea.

Besides, with as angry as he'd sounded, he'd probably—correctly—accuse her of trying to manipulate him again, and she got the feeling he was only going to let her off with a warning _once_. If she tried using sex against him again, he'd probably wring her neck.

So that left her… where?

She sighed as she realized that she had absolutely no idea how to proceed. Not knowing things pissed Evelyn off, and when she got pissed off, she got reckless, and she _hated_ the way she acted when she was reckless, which pissed her off even more. She wasn't used to the feeling of irritation balled up in the center of her chest.

"Damn it, Trevor," she muttered, knocking her head backward ineffectively against the mattress. "Everything was _perfect_ before you showed up. Fucking up my environment, throwing me off-balance. Fuck you."

She got up abruptly. If she didn't have a plan, she was just going to have to play it by ear. She needed to know what she was up against, and she didn't think waiting around would do her much good. She'd noticed that Trevor was more determined to hash out conflict with total honesty the _second_ it surfaced than anyone she'd ever met, which normally would be good, because that was the approach _she_ favored as well, but in this case it just meant that things had gotten intense _way_ too quickly and that they now knew way more about each other than they should. What that meant for her _now_ was that he was probably going to let this fight fester in his chest and hover over their heads until she showed her face again, regardless of how long she hid from him.

"Might as well get it over with," she said to herself, trying to summon her resolution, and before she could give herself an out, she left her room to search for him.

The crash had been her television, which he'd pulled off the wall and was now lying facedown on the floor. Glass shards were everywhere and the couch was askew, but her books were untouched. She felt strange noting this—she'd have thought that if he wanted to hurt her, he'd go after the things he knew she liked the most.

Carefully avoiding the glass, she moved through the house—only Trevor wasn't there anymore. She searched the rooms several times, thinking _no fucking way is he actually_ _ **gone**_ , and only when she noted that his truck was no longer parked in her driveway did she realize that he'd actually _left_ her.

Once the shock settled in, she was surprised to find that she was feeling distinctly irritated, though it didn't take her long to figure out _why._ The asshole had just thrown her headfirst into another dilemma—call the cops to report the shot man in her spare bedroom like a _sane_ person, or sit tight and wait to see what Trevor was doing?

Of _course_ she wasn't going to call the cops. At best, this was a test. She sure as hell wasn't going to alert the police to what had been going on for the past couple of days while the perpetrator was _gone_ ; that would _ensure_ that he wouldn't get caught and she did not doubt that he would come back once the smoke cleared and make good on the promise he'd made her when he first showed up. She was just mad that he'd _clearly_ left the option wide-open for her. It felt like a taunt.

"Trevor?"

 _Of fucking course._ She turned her head towards the bedroom where Ron's voice had just sounded and sighed. _Guess I get to find out if Ron's as dangerous as his boss._ Somehow, she doubted it.

Ron was sitting halfway up on the bed, and when she appeared in the doorway, he jumped. "Uh. Where's Trevor?" he asked nervously.

Evelyn rolled her eyes as she entered the room. " _Trevor_ got mad at me for something and stormed off."

Ron's eyes grew huge. "He _left_?"

"Looks that way." Evelyn glanced at her guest and, reading the sudden fear on his face, told him, "Don't worry, I'm not calling the cops. Trevor has made it _very_ clear that that's not a smart move, whether he's here or not, and I believe him. You're fine. How's the morphine treating you?"

"Um," Ron said, actually flinching back as she bent over him to check his bandages. "The pain's not terrible, and—well, to be honest, I'd rather not have any more. I don't like being unconscious, and, uh, I—I don't like needles."

"Yeah, you and a lot of other people," Evelyn muttered, straightening up. "Bandages are dirty. Time to change them. Did Trevor leave the first aid case?" The question was mostly rhetorical; she turned around to find it sitting open on the dresser. "Oh, good."

Ron seemed a little nervous and a little perplexed to find her going through the motions of removing his old bandages, judging from the way he'd crawled halfway up the headboard, with only his injured leg stretched out near her—she thought if she hadn't just assumed the authority in the situation, he might not even let her touch _that._ She muttered a curse at Trevor as she saw that he'd _duct taped_ the bandages to Ron's skin (fortunately _around_ the gunshot wound instead of _over_ it). "How fucking hard would it be to just use some damn medical adhesive?" she complained out loud before glancing up at Ron. "This isn't going to feel good."

"Just… do it," he said, steeling his shoulders, and she carefully went about peeling the tape off, removing a good portion of his leg hair at the same time (and pulling some interesting noises out of Ron). After a moment's patient work, the bloodied bandage was free from his leg.

"Hmm," she said, peering at the wound. "It doesn't look infected, so that's a plus. Might want to tell your boss to get you some antibiotics anyway, though."

"You mean poison from Big Pharma?" Evelyn blinked and stared at Ron, who scoffed. "I don't think so."

"Hate the effects of capitalism and government control over the health care industry all you want, but you're not going to get very far in life if you think penicillin was invented by witches, buddy," she said, reaching for the fresh bandages.

He was silent at that. He didn't strike her as the silent type—at _all_ —so she glanced at him as she rummaged around looking for medical tape to find that he was staring at her, looking utterly mystified. "What?" she asked, frowning.

"Trevor said you were a _hostage_."

"I was." She snorted. "Am, I think. I don't know, the lines are getting blurred." _And I don't fucking like it,_ she thought, but didn't think Ron needed to hear about any of her internal conflict bullshit.

"You're not really… _acting_ like a hostage," he said, sounding baffled, and Evelyn bit out a short laugh.

"I don't exactly hang out with a lot of other hostages, but still, that doesn't surprise me to hear," she said, wrapping the bandages around his leg. "If I gotta work with the bad guys to get through it, I'll work with the bad guys to get through it. That's what's freaking you out, right? The fact that I'm helping you out right now even though Trevor's not here to make me?"

"More than a little bit," he admitted.

"Yeah. Well, this is more not wanting to see a fellow human being turn gangrenous and suffer, especially not in my spare bedroom. Trevor would probably do the fucking amputation _himself_."

"Amputation?" Ron said weakly.

Evelyn looked him directly in the eye and said, "I don't want blood all over my sheets. Get some fucking antibiotics."

* * *

Trevor was feeling a bit more like himself.

Being stuck in that damn house with that damn woman had turned his head around. If he stayed, odds were very good that he'd do something he'd regret—which wasn't normally enough to budge him, but for some reason, he found himself out the door and in his truck, taking off and leaving her neighborhood behind before his rage could really work itself into a frenzy.

Fuck her. _Fuck_ her; he was absolutely _sick_ of that holier-than-thou save-the-world _bullshit._ She was so full of _shit,_ pretending like she gave a single damn about that wuss of a neighbor—or anyone but _herself,_ really. Trevor had spent the last twenty-something hours trying to get to the root of her bullshit, and it was a waste of his fucking time, because every time he thought he had her pinned, she'd wriggle out from under him somehow and run away. It was _infuriating,_ and he was done playing that fucking game.

He tightened his hands on his steering wheel as he drove at speeds that were probably unwise and thought about his immediate wants.

Well, what he _really_ wanted was to get sucked off, but all the hookers would be asleep this time of day, _especially_ in North Chumash, which was a little more cleaned up than Sandy Shores or the trashier parts of Los Santos. He took care of himself instead, more to get rid of the annoyance that was his erection than because he was really in the mood for it anymore, and then, thinking a bit more clearly, he turned the car towards Sandy Shores.

After all, the reason—ostensibly—that he was at Evelyn's in the first place was that the bikers were trying to crawl up his ass, were the parties responsible for that ambush on him and Ron, and he wanted to lay low while Ron recovered. _Wanted_ to (admittedly in part because he was curious about the pretty bank teller who hadn't screamed even once when she'd been robbed and taken hostage), but didn't _have_ to. Best way to get his ass out of that house for good was to go ahead and take care of the problem.

 _I'm fucking sick and tired of these fucking cockroaches_ , he reflected as he hit desert country. No matter how many times he had to wipe the Lost the fuck out, there were always survivors, stragglers that managed to reform and come back at him. He was always up for a good scuffle, but right now, he was just fucking pissed off and needed to kill somebody. Even through his cold-burning rage, he knew that he was taking his anger at Evelyn out on the bikers, but fuck it, they deserved it.

He stopped at Ammunation to pick up explosives and ammo. Then he went to his trailer.

They were waiting for him.

Unfortunately for them, Sandy Shores was his home. He knew every street, knew every bit of stray rubbish or stranded truck hood he could use for cover. He approached in near-silence, took cover behind his neighbor's fence, and started throwing grenades. As the first one went off and bullets started flying, he found himself screaming, "You jumped-up little shits! You want a firefight? Well, you've _FUCKING_ GOT ONE!"

It wasn't long before the edges of his vision blurred orange, and he succumbed into a rage, turning responsibility for his actions over to the near-invincible monster that emerged when he was at his worst (or best, depending on who you were asking).

When he returned to himself, bodies were littering his yard.

He tasked their removal to Wade, turned around, got back in his truck, and headed back to North Chumash. He wasn't worried about anyone fucking around and calling the cops on him—this was Sandy Shores, and even if the cops weren't a bunch of corrupt fuckers, everyone who lived there knew that gang violence and gunfights were all part of the atmosphere. Anyone not actively involved just kept their heads down and stayed indoors these days, which suited Trevor just fine.

The violence, brief and bloody as it was, had allowed him to exorcise some of the more impulsive violent feelings he'd been harboring for most of the day, and, like the aftermath of a good fuck, it came with a couple of level-headed realizations.

The primary one was that he was getting Ron and he was fucking leaving Evelyn's house before he turned into even more of a pussy. She had him acting like—well, _not_ like Trevor Philips. Trevor Philips didn't get led on by girls; he didn't argue with them for hours on end without getting fatally violent with the source of his agitation, and he sure as hell didn't just _accept_ blue balls. Sure, she was pretty, sure she was smarter than a lot of the people he held company with, sure he still wanted to fuck her brains out—but she was so damn stubborn and too damn scared to look at her entire self, warts and all, and he was fucking sick and tired of weak people lying to themselves about who they were. The entire state was full of them; he didn't need to spend time around one more.

So it was with determination that he stomped back into her house shortly after nightfall, the drive to Sandy Shores and back having eaten up the majority of the day. He stopped inside, and rather than shout out to announce his presence, since he'd spent the whole day being pissed at her and wasn't planning on stopping now, he cocked his head and listened.

Voices coming from the back room. He frowned, suddenly remembering that he hadn't given Ron another shot since that morning. He strode into the back of the house, found the spare bedroom door open, and pushed it slowly open, standing in the doorway to take in the sight that met him.

Ron was sitting upright on the bed, leg stretched out in front of him, the bandages looking clean and fresh. Evelyn was crouched in a chair at the foot of the bed, her knees hugged to her chest, and she was pointed at Ron, had clearly been talking to him, but her attention was on Trevor as soon as the door opened. He saw a flash of fear cross her face, and he felt a fierce stir of satisfaction in his chest. _Good_. She'd do well to remember that she ought to be terrified of him.

The fear disappeared fast; she masked it like she tried to do with anything she felt that might mean jack shit. Instead, half-smiling, she glanced at Ron and said to Trevor, "He won't tell me his theories about the recent wars in the middle east."

Ron had gone mute in Trevor's presence, clearly nervous at having been caught talking to the hostage, and Trevor took his time answering, rolling his neck to the side until he heard a series of satisfying cracks before relaxing it. "As far as I've been able to tell, Ron refusing to yap about that shit is a compliment," he said, giving her a little grin that might have had been just a little too threateningly toothy. He saw the look of doubt surface on her face before she could control it, ignored her, and glanced at Ron instead. "How're you feeling, Ronnie?"

"Just—just fine, Trevor," Ron stammered instantly. "You know, I can _hardly_ tell I got shot."

Evelyn gave him a sharp look when she heard that, but Trevor didn't care. If Ron was lying—well, he should know better and would have to pay the consequences: in this case, having to stick to his word. "Great!" Trevor said with rather hollow enthusiasm as he clapped his employee on the shoulder hard. "In that case, we're going."

"B-but the Lost?" demanded Ron as Trevor turned to leave the room.

Trevor paused in the doorway, glanced at him, and said, "Not a problem. Get your shit together, we're outta here in five."

He then left the room to go pluck a beer from the fridge and survey the place to see if he was forgetting anything. And, of fucking course, he heard soft footfalls behind him, too light and even to be Ron's.

"What do _you_ want?" he asked, not even bothering to look behind him as he surveyed the wrecked living room.

"Nothing," was the immediate, defensive response, and he glanced over his shoulder with a skeptically lifted eyebrow.

"Oh, yeah? Well, you know, if that's the case, then go back to your room and wait it out. That's what you're _good_ at, right?"

He saw something in her expression—irritation at least, anger at worst. She wasn't mad enough to express it yet, though. Instead, she told him, "You're covered in blood."

He laughed harshly. "Yeah, no shit," he said, though he hadn't actually noticed until she pointed it out. Good thing the jeans were dark. Before he could say anything else, though, he whirled around and confronted her. "What the fuck do you _want_ , Evelyn?"

Asking her for the second time seemed to drive it home for her that she simply didn't have an excuse to be following him around. If she was still playing the put-upon little hostage (as if anyone could _really_ make that little spitfuck do _anything_ she didn't want to do), then she'd be forced to go to her room like he'd ordered her and wait for them to leave. If she didn't go... well, then through action she'd be admitting to the fact that this was something else, and then maybe he could get somewhere.

He waited.

She took a step forward, and he felt that same surge of triumph in his chest. He didn't let on, though, just turning his head casually back forward again and sipping from his beer, waiting for the right time to attack. Trevor wasn't typically a strategic, waiting around kind of guy, but he had all the power in the situation, and he was enjoying it for a change. He was gonna drag her over the coals, then hang her dry like she'd been doing to him—see how she liked it.

Softly, she said, "I'm sorry."

He tightened his hand on his bottle so hard it nearly broke and turned slowly around. "Sorry?" he asked lightly, still in that innocuous, pleasant tone. "Sorry for what?"

She didn't answer. Instead, clearly reading danger in his too-pleasant tone, she took a step backwards. He matched it with a step forward, then another. Prowling towards her, he cocked his head like a hunting animal with prey in its sights and said, "Sorry for… what, gettin' me all roused up and then shutting me down cold not once, but _twice_? For standing up for some whining pussy of a neighbor you don't even _like_ and getting fucking pissed at _me_ when I tell you the truth about him?"

She'd started moving backwards as he moved forwards, and by this point, she'd run into the kitchen counters. He closed the majority of the remaining space between them quickly, standing directly in front of her with his feet nearly touching hers, and as she inched backwards onto the counter to grab up every spare bit of personal space, he reached up, hooking a finger covered in rusty-colored dried blood under her chin and none-too-gently pulling her face up so she had to look at him. Once he had her looking in his eyes (and she didn't flinch away, meeting his stare as soon as he made her, which was a good sign that she was about to start fighting again— _good_ , he wanted her to), he said, "I don't like girls who pull shit like that, Evy, and I sure as hell don't accept _apologies_ from them."

"Don't accept it, then," she replied, her lips barely moving, and her tone was so quiet he thought for a second he'd imagined it.

He blinked and tilted his head down closer to hers. "Excuse me?"

"I said, 'don't accept it," she repeated, louder this time but still in a controlled, not-shouting tone of voice. "It's mostly bullshit, anyway."

Well, those words certainly had the effect of tearing off the mask of uncharacteristic calm he'd been wearing. He felt his face contorting with the sudden fury, but Evelyn was already snarling, her eyes fixed on his, like she could hold him back if she just kept him in her sights and spun him around some more: " _Goddamnit_ , Trevor! Why are you doing this to me?"

 _Oh, the fuck with this_. Fighting past the impulse to just backhand her right off that goddamn countertop, managing to remind himself that his mother would skin him alive if she found out he hit girls, he instead put one hand down hard on either side of her, leaned into her face, and snarled, "What the _fuck_ am _I_ doing to _you_?"

Her instinctive response was to plant a hand in his chest and try to push him back, but he didn't give an inch. Sitting there, one hand braced against him as if she still thought she might be able to keep him at bay, she caught her breath, then she spat out the words, low and furious: "We are _not dating_ , Trevor! I'm your fucking hostage!"

"Bullshit," he spat, baring his teeth.

"No bullshit."

"Abso _lute_ bullshit," he countered. "It started out that way, but you and I _both_ fucking know that's not what this is anymore. Otherwise I'd've tied you back to the chair after that first time you tried to fucking shut me up by planting one on me—which was a _bullshit_ move, by the way."

She turned her head away from him; he reached up immediately and wrenched it back forward, because when she was looking him in the eye, she couldn't lie to him, and she couldn't hide from him. The eyes were burning green again, the way they did when she was too mad to think straight, and he welcomed the sight of it. At least this way he could get some fucking honesty out of her.

God, he was glad she was one of those girls who just didn't seem to fucking cry, no matter what happened. Her voice was strong and her eyes were bone-dry as she said, "What do you want me to say, Trev? That I'm attracted to you? Cause I am; I've already admitted that. That I'm fucking petrified of you? Cause I'm that, too. And it can be a little hard to fucking _reconcile_ those feelings—not that I imagine you'd know, because I doubt you've been afraid a _day_ in your life."

Maybe it was her inclusion of that last bit, the reminder that she really didn't fucking know him at _all_ , that cooled his temper for a second. The anger was still buzzing in his chest, but no longer did he want to beat something to a pulp. He shifted back slightly, glanced down, let go of her chin, and squared his shoulders. Newly freed, she bowed her head slightly forward, forehead just inches away from his torso, and he felt the urge—maybe aggressive, maybe affectionate, maybe a little bit of both—to grab that head and pull it to him, just hold it crushed against his chest. After a second, she spoke again, quietly, practically addressing the floor.

"You scare me because I don't know who I am with you. I haven't decided that I don't _care_ about that yet, so I can't decide… you know, how to act—or _not_ act—on the attraction. I haven't figured everything out yet. I'm in limbo. So I can't give you anything solid, and for _that_ , I really _am_ sorry," she added, glancing up and meeting his eyes.

Trevor folded his arms over his chest, processing what she had to say. "Okay," he said at length, then gave a decisive nod. "Well, Evy, sorry to say that makes you a fucking coward. I don't hold with cowards." He narrowed his eyes at her, channeling all the aggression he was feeling into the look, not faltering even when she gave him a wounded look, like he'd just stuck a short blade in her spine. "So, congratulations. You get what you want, I'm out of your hair. I get what _I_ want, I don't have to be around all your useless fuckin' _fear_. Everybody wins." He turned away.

She lashed out and grabbed his elbow. "Trevor, wait—"

He rocked right back around to her, got straight in her face, lifted a threatening finger, and said, "Evelyn, if you ask me to fucking stay, I swear to _God_ —"

He started it as a threat, but he cut himself off as he realized that really, he had no fucking idea where he was going with it or what he would _actually_ do. _He swore to God_ —what? He'd gut her? He'd throw the keys in Ron's face, turn him out, and spend the next week—month, _year_ —fucking her till she'd forgotten her fear, her precious solitude, everything but his goddamn _name_?

He'd thought he'd figured out his stance on Evelyn on the way home, but as he stood there looking at her kicked-puppy face, he realized that he was _far_ from figured out when it came to her. It irritated the shit out of him, but it was true.

Which only meant it was imperative that he _actually_ leave. Maybe then he could clear his head some, figure out what he was gonna do with this shit in the future. _If anything_.

Growling low in his chest, he reached out the arm she was still holding, grabbed the back of her head, and jerked her forward, smashing a rather rough kiss to her forehead, probably more painful than anything and entirely reflective of his frustration, but she didn't make a sound. After a second, he let her go, said, "All right," and turned to go get Ron.

Evelyn had disappeared, presumably back to her room, by the time he lugged Ron's carcass out from the bedroom. She didn't show her face as he loaded Ron into the truck, and he didn't look back once before driving off.

* * *

Evelyn didn't call the police after Trevor left. She didn't see the fucking point. They weren't going to catch him, especially now that he was gone, and the only real effect that getting the police involved would have was that she would have her second lengthy interaction with Trevor Philips (a lengthy interaction that she also _survived_ , which made it worse) on public record.

Besides. As much as she hadn't wanted to blatantly admit it to him, Trevor was right. It hadn't _just_ been a hostage situation, and she did _not_ want to take the chance that the detectives might be shrewder this time around and pick up on the fact that she was _entirely_ conflicted about the whole situation. The only thing that would do would land her in serious trouble.

It astonished her how quickly life went back to normal. She drank _way_ too much wine Saturday night to try and get some distance from the situation, spent Sunday hungover and freaking out thinking he might come back and that she wasn't _ready_ for that, then on Monday… she went back to work and her life resumed as if those twenty-four hours had never happened.

And she tried her best to pretend they hadn't. She thought about Trevor more than she wanted to, always with that weird uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, but given their last conversation, she didn't think she _should_ think about him. All the signs pointed to him being eager to wash his hands of her, and she didn't want to waste her time and energy sorting out exactly how she felt about him if it was just going to end in disappointment and heartbreak. Somehow, she thought, she wouldn't be surprised if she never laid eyes on him again in her life.

Then, about a month later, she'd come home to find a big-ass dog in her house. The creature came trotting up to her quite calmly once she'd opened the door, sitting at her feet as she froze. When the dog did nothing but pant and stare at her with big brown eyes, she slowly closed the door behind her, then noticed the dirty piece of paper pinned to the thing's collar.

Very cautiously, she stooped down. The dog was massive, at least half pit-bull judging by the triangular head and big jaws, and it was so big and muscular that she felt she was justified in worrying that it would suddenly lunge forward and bite her face off.

It just watched, though, breathing gusts of hot dog breath into her face, totally placid as she cautiously unpinned the note from its collar and stood up again.

Written on the note in the ugliest black scrawl she had ever seen in her life:

_This is Buch. He is a good junk yard dog._   
_He luvs wimmen but if he seez any1 with a dick he will bite it of._   
_yr home securitee is still **shit** ._

_**-T** _

She read the note over three times, the smile on her face only growing with each time. Of _course_ he would give her the tremendously impractical, tremendously _Trevor_ gift of a fucking pit bull. Finally, she slipped the note into her back pocket, put her hands on her hips, and looked down at the dog. "Are you going to bite my face off if I kiss you?" she asked him directly.

He looked back up at her and cocked his head.

"I'll take that as a _maybe_ ," she said, opting instead to scratch him on the top of his head, since any dog _Trevor_ gave her was not one she was going to trust with her life right away. Still, with those intelligent eyes and that stubby tail thumping away in response to her attention, this one _might_ end up being a keeper.

"I'll tell you one thing, though," she said. "Trevor can whine about it all he likes, but I am _not_ calling you Butch." Feeling lighter than she had in days, her mood boosted just enough that even _she_ didn't feel the need to question or worry about where this left them, she went whistling to go figure out where to find the nearest pet store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand here's where we close the book on this installation of the series, but the next one is coming your way very soon. Maybe now that Trev and Evy are out of the whole home invasion rut they can get over their respective tempers and actually make some kind of progress towards a healthy relationship (and maybe pigs will fly, too). And did somebody say Michael? (I did. I said Michael. Michael will be in the next story for a while, wooo!)
> 
> Really, all that's left is for me to say that I've had more fun writing this than I've had writing anything for some time, and the response from you guys made me feel so happy and at home in a fandom I'm totally new to, so thank you for that. You guys rock my socks right off. See you next time!


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